Russian Federation

[RU] Regulations of the Licensing Body Amended

IRIS 2008-2:1/29

Andrei Richter

Comenius University (Bratislava)

New powers were given to the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Mass Communications, Telecommunications and Protection of Cultural Heritage ( Россвязьохранкультура ) by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in March 2007 (see IRIS 2007-7: 18). The Service now not only provides licensing of broadcasting, as well as organisation and supply of the licensing commission (the Federal Competition Commission), but also performs both the legal regulation and the supervision in this field.

In the absence of a broadcasting statute in Russia, licensing in broadcasting is now largely regulated by orders of the Россвязьохранкультура , a body directly under the command of the Government of the Russian Federation. An order, No. 175 of the Service of 21 September 2007, approved the new Regulations of the Federal Competition Commission on Broadcasting (FCC). It went into effect in December 2007.

The new features of the Regulations are as follows. While the composition of the FCC remains at nine members, at least one third will now rotate each year. This rule, according to the memorandum which accompanies the order, was introduced in order to “raise the quality of the Commission’s work, provide impartiality of the voting, make for maximum effectiveness of the use of the limited natural resource of frequencies allocated for broadcasting purposes”. All members will be appointed by order of the Director of the Service at his/her will (previously this was by order of the Minister of Culture and Mass Communications). The meetings of the FCC will take place once a month (previously twice a month).

On 18 December 2007 Boris Boyarskov, the Director of Россвязьохранкультура , approved the new composition of the FCC. Five of its nine members are new. Among them are a new chair Sergei Sitnikov, who holds the position of the Deputy Director of the Россвязьохранкультура ; a deputy director of the governmental department on mass communications; the director of the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg; a deputy chair of the state-run national broadcaster VGTRK; and a famous comedian, now the director of the Variety Theatre in Moscow.