The FINANCIAL — While Europe is thinking of what kind of economic sanctions to use to punish Russia for its hostile acts, Georgian media management have started to look for alternative ways not to lose out in the case of a web blockade.
The story is interesting as Georgian media is standing in the middle of the facts and as we know one who stands between two conflicting sides is more at risk than others.
“We were started in 2004. From the very beginning we were a Georgian-Russian initiative, which after a while became a hostage between these two countries. After the internet blocked the website TLD ru in Georgia we started a new web page with internet TLD ge. But now we face another problem, as they have blocked Georgian websites in Russia,” Elena Imedashvili, Director of Project News in Georgia, told The FINANCIAL.
Georgia became the top most “popular” news item over the last couple of weeks.
According to Elena, a lot of users began visiting their site and the fact is that the site was not prepared for such a large number of visitors.
But News Georgia seems to have problems with local providers. The Agency website is not available for many users in Georgia. Maybe because of agency affiliation with Russian state owned Ria Novosti. Even though agency management claims to be independent organization. Agency administration advises Georgian users to access the website through proxy servers.
According to website statistics 98% of NewsGeorgia users come from abroad, mainly from Russia.
“We were attacked. Our site stopped working on the August 9. It took us three or four days to restore work. Before the Russian-Georgian war 10,000 people had paid a visit to our web page. They were mostly Georgian diasporas abroad, also journalists and political scientists – basically anyone interested in Georgia. On August 8 we had more than 100,000 readers a day.. Now we keep a level of 150,000 visitors a day.
The hot Georgian news helped a lot of internet sites to get new visitors. “Our material interests were always connected with increasing the number of our readers. The wider your audience, the more your income from advertisements is.”
Interrupting relationships with advertisers is really hard for everyone, especially if you are existing with the help of a grant.
“We stopped advertisements on our site to make it work better and lost numerous clients. With the right management after stabilization of a situation you must do your best to preserve your audience. We added analytics as inquiry results showed that people need analytics, generalization of facts, which has happened.”
Wartime has its own private rules and Elena Imedashvili knows them well: “There is no one we can complain to because of technical problems. As it’s not only our agency’s problem, but all of the internet recourses which are working in Georgia. I can’t say if it was an organized attack, I don’t have such information.”
The situation is clearer with TV companies. Georgian regulator commission ordered Ayety TV to interrupt broadcasting Russian news channels.
“We shut down only Russian news channels first, but soon when the Russian government started to use cultural channels for spreading it’s disinformation we blocked them too,” Nana Namoradze, Program Director of Ayety TV channel, told The FINANCIAL.
At the end of August Ayety TV will count its private loses: “We are going to count our losses at the end of this month. It would depend on the number of clients we lost. To my astonishment a large number of our clients ceased to collaborate with us because of the disconnection of Russian channels,” Namoradze added.
In answer to The FINANCIAL’s question, if regulative commission is going to compensate the loss, Namoradze explained: “Nothing is compensated during a force-major condition.”
Newspapers, which couldn’t get delivered to their destinations, also saw losses.
According to Manana Berianidze, the owner of press distribution association, because of the war on Monday and Saturday (11-12 August) most typographics didn’t work. Newspapers shortened their circulation.
“I am a provider of three objects and at wartime I collected GEL 500. Only 60% of newspapers were published. Now the sum of sold newspapers reaches GEL 800 with a shortage of 100-200.”
The situation was the same with other press spreading associations.
“After some days of being paralyzed we began to be able to get through to the western part of Georgia, bordering Tsalka. These paralyzed days of course showed losses but for me it would be a shame to talk about such a small loss.
“The situation was harder for daily publications. As for the Russian and foreign publications all of them get here from Russia and of course have been stopped. But we already thought about alternative ways and for real readers we have offered to print exclusively for them from electronic versions,” Merab Chanchalashvili, General Director of Planet Forte, press spreading agency.
“24 Hours didn’t circulate on Monday, because the agencies refused to work in both the regions and Tbilisi because of the war. The editorship was working and also our newspaper was ready for sale. We published 24 Hours even on Sunday (which we don’t usually) because of demand.
The typography faced a problem of papers, because 90% of papers were imported from Russia. At the beginning they had some reserve and soon they just exchanged Russian paper with Turkish.
“As for the concrete number of our losses, we just presume that on the one day when we didn’t sell a thing, the loss suffered was GEL 142,500. Because of all these problems we reduced the circulation of 24 Hours to 500 pieces,” said Irakli Lejava, Marketing and Advertisement General Director of 24 Hours.
According to Davit Qiquashvili, Marketing Manager of Media House KVIRIS PALITRA, they aren’t publishing some newspapers of the holding.
“These are: TV palitra, because Russian channels didn’t broadcast at all and Georgian ones had no idea what they would show; we have dropped a number of sports publications, because of its low interest during this period and an advertisement publication of KVIRIS PALITRA, SITKVA DA SAQME. We haven’t counted our losses yet but it won’t be less than several thousand. Our holding serves 22 publications but we couldn’t even get to the western part of the country for three days. We also left Gori in an informational vacuum for two weeks.”
As for Georgian TV companies they stopped broadcasting in Russia and showed a minimum of advertisements.
TV company RUSTAVI 2’s media manager Tea Javaxishvili explained the reason for the advertisement shortage, “Everyone could notice how much the number of advertisements on our channel were reduced. At first, I have to mention that usually the number of advertisements often shortens in August, but this time of course the war was the reason.”
At the most critical time in the country from 1 pm to 3 am our TV company didn’t launch even a single advertisement.
“We didn’t want to add any funny colours and pictures to our channel. However we don’t expect any interruption of the contract with our clients. We have already started to load the channel with advertisements again. This was firstly because of the more or less stabilization of the situation and secondly because of other companies going back to work.”
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