04 February 2004 17:49
Russia: NTV news jobs in jeopardy as Gazprom prepares sell-off
High-quality news broadcasts may soon cease to be the bread and butter of Independent Television [NTV] - news service
staff are beginning to be cut at the channel. The channel's general director, Nikolay Senkevich, is talking about
the "planned downsizing of sections throughout the channel," while journalists say that the redundancies will
only affect the news service, and structures close to Gazprom have found out that NTV may be being groomed for sale.
Behind the scenes at NTV, staff began to discuss reports about upcoming mass redundancies back in December 2003. Then
the redundancies were linked to a possible review of programming policy (the channel had conducted an internal audit and
had commissioned widescale market research) and the need to significantly reduce expenditure. The journalists had hoped
that the redundancies would only affect the so-called ballast - people engaged in projects that had ended last summer
and were sitting twiddling their thumbs. But at the end of last week, staffers working for the news service, whose
programmes enjoy stable ratings, discovered that they had been dismissed.
It is Gazeta's information that three journalists - Irina Bliznyuk, Yevgeniy Maslov, and Yekaterina Golovina -
have been dismissed from the channel. Konstantin Mylnikov has been transferred to what is viewed by the channel as a
less prestigious position - he has become editor of Kirill Pozdnyakov's team. At the end of last week, four
staffers working on the "National Security" programme, headed by general manager and presenter Yelena
Sarkisyan, discovered completely by chance that they too had been dismissed. NTV journalists have discovered that there
are plans to dismiss a total of 70 staff, plus people on attachment and contract workers. This accounts for
approximately one fifth of all news service staff. Admittedly, NTV General Director Nikolay Senkevich assured Gazeta
that only 7 per cent of all staff would be dismissed: "A planned optimization of management structures is being
carried out, in accordance with the demands of the board of directors.
There is no bias towards top news broadcast staff. The requirement to optimize affects all sections. Every manager is
bringing his organizational structures in line with the goals and tasks set by the board of directors. At the present
time, we can realistically talk about 7 per cent optimization. Moreover, first and foremost at the expense of people
working for the company on contracts protected by civil law." According to Senkevich, the "plan to optimize
top news staff's work was elaborated and approved both by Deputy Director for News Policy Aleksandr Gerisimov and
Chief Editor Tatyana Mitkova.
Gazeta has discovered that one possible reason for optimizing expenditure is Gazprom's intention to get rid of
NTV as an asset outside its area of specialization. Cost cutting is something that affects the news service first
because the high-quality news broadcasts that NTV has been producing for the past decade are an expensive luxury. Even
with the programme's constant high ratings, Segodnya finds it hard to recoup expenditure from advertising
revenue.
"The current purge is excessive and will damage the channel. The most unpleasant thing about this is that the
channel's management is not bothering to give reasons for the downsizing and is not always guided by good sense.
Among those on the lists are quite a few people without whom the quality of the news broadcasts might get worse, though
many ineffective staffers are keeping their jobs," an NTV news service staffer who did not wish to be identified
complained in conversation with me. News service managers have so far not shown much interest in the dismissal of staff,
because neither the First Channel, nor Rossiya, nor Centre TV now have any spare capacity, nor do they envisage having
any in the near future. "The only place where newsmen might be required is the news channel, which is being
established by Grigoriy Krichevskiy under the aegis of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting
Company," a senior staffer from one of the TV channels told Gazeta.
[Gazeta] |
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