Thousands Rally for Armenian TV Station Facing Closure

YEREVAN — Tigran Karapetian, an Armenian politician, businessman and television commentator, rallied thousands of supporters in Yerevan on Friday to protest against state regulators’ decision to take his ALM channel off the air.
ALM lost its broadcasting license last month in a supposedly competitive tender administered by the National Commission on Television and Radio (HRAH). The decision means that will have to discontinue broadcasts by the end of this month.
Karapetian condemned the HRAH’s decision not to give him a new, digital frequency as he addressed several thousand supporters who gathered in central Yerevan. “ALM is not mine, it’s yours,” he told the unexpectedly large crowd. “They want to silence your voice.”
“The ALM TV channel is not a beer kiosk, it’s a popular value, a channel accessible to the people,” he said.
Karapetian also denounced the HRAH for not renewing the license of the Gyumri-based outspoken GALA channel and again refusing to let A1+, Armenia’s leading independent TV station pulled off the air in 2002, resume broadcasts.
ALM has been popular with working-class and rural Armenians throughout its nearly decade-long existence. Karapetian founded it after living and making a fortune in Russia in the 1990s. He has been the station’s most recognizable face since then, hosting political talk shows and phone-ins on a virtually daily basis. He also played host on folksy entertainment programs aired by ALM in the years leading up to the May 2007 parliamentary elections.
Unlike GALA and A1+, ALM has generally avoided airing criticism of Armenia’s current and previous presidents.
Speaking at the rally, Karapetian refrained from directly attacking President Serzh Sarkisian and other key government figures or holding them personally responsible for the impending closure of ALM. He instead decried what he called widespread “injustice” and the “plunder of the people.”
“At issue is injustice in general, the way they treat us at our own home,” he said without naming names. “Let’s say no it.”