DUSHANBE, September 17, 2010, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan has resumed rebroadcasting Russia’s television channel, RTR-Planeta.
On September 15, RTR-Planeta rebroadcasting was resumed in Sughd and Khatlon province, and since September 16 RTR-Planeta can be picked by residents of Dushanbe.
Samad Hikmatov, the deputy head of the Committee for TV ad Radio Broadcasting, told Asia-Plus yesterday afternoon that transmitter installed at the height of 140 meters “could not receive and distribute waves across the whole country and we had to remove some technical defects.”
We will recall that an agreement on resumption of RTR-Planeta rebroadcasting in Tajikistan was reached during a meeting of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon with his Russian counterpart, President Dmitry Medvedev, in Sochi, Russia on August 18.
Tajik Committee for TV and Radio-broadcasting stopped airing the state-run RTR Planeta on March 2, 2009 due to unpaid fees by the Russian side. RTR-Planeta was the only Russian-language broadcaster operating in Tajikistan as the rebroadcasting of Russia”s First Public Television Channel (ORT) programs in the country ended in 1999 due to ORT”s reluctance to pay fees.
ORT and other Russian television channels are now available only for holders of holders of satellite dishes in Tajikistan. In the meantime, according to the statistical data from Teleradikom, not more than 15 percent of Tajikistan’s more than 7-million population have satellite dishes.
