New Pro-Georgian TV Station Broadcasts to South Ossetia

A Russian-language television station targeted at audiences in South Ossetia has been broadcasting since 1 November, Georgian Rustavi-2 TV reported.

It said that Alania TV’s managers and “foreign sponsors” had requested that their names and the location of the station’s studios should not be disclosed. Rustavi-2 honoured their request but showed a television tower near the central Georgian town of Gori from where it said the signal was transmitted to South Ossetia.

Alania TV carries a total of about 30 minutes of news a day, most of it devoted to “Georgia and its achievements”, Rustavi-2 said, adding that “in Tskhinvali and nearby villages it is already being regarded as an ideological enemy”. According to Rustavi-2, the station “is not paying too much attention to copyright” and devotes a lot of time to popular music video clips.

Twice a week Alania TV broadcasts a cartoon show called Samogonshchiki (Bootleggers) which caricatures South Ossetia’s political elite and Georgian government officials. Rustavi-2 rebroadcast a 13-minute episode in the show featuring separatist president Eduard Kokoiti, several of his ministers, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, Minister of State Giorgi Khaindrava and the governor of Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, Mikheil Kareli. The credits at the end of the episode said: “We wish to thank Moscow-based Ossetian businessmen for supporting this series.”