GPB to announce competition for new season
By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, March 7
The Director General of the state-financed Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB), Vasil Maghlaperidze, says the competition for a new season will be announced on March 10 and everyone will be allowed to participate in it.
The director added that according to the plan, the reforms will be implemented in the GPB as quickly and painlessly as possible.
“The programs for a new season will be introduced through a competition and this will be the directions provided by law and approved by the board,” he said.
Maghlaperidze also said that the construction of a new building for the GPB had been launched. The new building became necessary after Makhlaperidze stated that the old one was 'totally amortized' and could not be rehabilitated.
The Director General said he had reached an agreement with the eight-member Board of Trustees over a new action plan, in order to overcome financial and other problems in the broadcaster.
The Chairman of Board of Trustees of the broadcaster, Grigol Gogelia, says that not a single TV program will be closed until the new TV season.
“Nothing will be changed until this summer and after this we will move towards fulfillment of our undertaken obligations and to implementation of effective projects,” Gogoelia said.
The Board members say that at this stage the scheme presented by the GPB management, which envisaged dividing the programs into 3 groups, is no longer realistic.
Sulkhan Saladze, a member of the Board, says that the GPB Management confirms that current programming will remain and all the programs will be aired till July 17.
"In parallel, the management says that it will announce a competition for all interested groups for selecting programs for a new season, which will be launched from September. More details will be revealed at the next sitting of the Board,” Saladze said.
The Georgian Public Broadcaster is a state-funded TV channel. This year, the GPB will get 46.4 million GEL from the budget, which is 2.4 million less than the funding it received last year.
