Alfred Kokh to purchase Gazprom’s media assets

The Kommersant newspaper published a sensational statement from Alfred Kokh (the chairman of Board of Directors of Gazprom-Media), who said he was going to acquire all media assets of the Russian joint-stock gas giant Gazprom. The financial position of the NTV network is far from being ideal. Gusinsky’s management team actually made the television network go bankrupt. The TV companies receive profit presumably owing to commercial advertising. The higher the rating, the more expensive advertising. NTV sold its commercial time for one year period on dumping prices and the current administration can not do anything about it.

The western investors were not really striving for buying NTV – the company had negative solvency. Their interests decreased and the Russian oligarchs do not really want to deal with the media because of the possible angry reaction on the part of the Kremlin. It is not really clear how Alfred Kokh is going to buy the TV channel and where he is going to take so much money from. May be he will do it for Anatoly Chubais (the chairman of the RAO UES of Russia administration), who is currently accumulating the media resources for holding a mass PR campaign for RAO UES of Russia.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru