Nino Jangirashvili, the founder of "Kavkasia" TV Company, says that "Georgian Dream" has deliberately started to destroy the television advertising market since 2014 in order to create a problem for the existence of independent media.
According to her, she cannot see the future of independent media in the country without political changes.
"Georgian Dream has been moving gradually towards the destruction of the advertising market for years, in order to destroy critical and independent media. In 2022, there was a kind of culmination, when another segment left the market. This was not a step taken out of context, it was the result of staight policy. This had the worst impact on the independent media. Namely, my media is in a very critical financial situation and so are many others. Specifically, I will say about my television that I am in danger of stopping broadcasting because I have no more income. I don't know exactly about other people's accounting, but everyone has problems. It's just that someone has a support pillow, while others don't. I don't have it, and I will say directly that my television is now in the worst financial situation," says Jangirashvili.
“Transparency International Georgia” published a traditional report on TV advertising market review on October2. Last year Financial viability came under an additional threat due to limited time frames, the media met the deteriorated legislation unprepared and pressure on the media mounted. The Georgian media is finding it difficult to evolve as a successful/profitable business, the reason for which may be the increased self censorship in the business environment.
According to TV advertising market research, the already scarce advertising revenues of broadcasters decreased by 10 million GEL in 2022 and amounted to 73.6 million GEL.
