Recently, as the RA national security plan is under discussion, more and more we fell that Armenia is unprotected. Our legislation of regulating civic fields, as a rule, doesn’t have any effective protecting systems as a base. For instance, “The RA law on advertisements” has been in effect since 1996. Logically its job is to regulate this field. Even more, the legislation is not that bad (probably it has been taken from a third country). According to Article 24 of this law the body that is responsible for the fulfillment of this law and control is to be founded according to the proceedings defined by the government. Ten years have passed after the adoption of this law, but our government hasn’t managed yet to found such a body. This means that there isn’t any body in our country that is responsible for controlling the advertisement field and the law fulfillment. And the results are evident: the advertisements of alcoholic drinks and tobacco are widespread both on TV and radio. This shows that our state doesn’t want to control this field. The state has given its resources of broadcast to private businesses through organizing competitions and is not involved in it any more in any way. There are no legal and moral standards controlling the activities of private TV companies. For instance in Georgia, Ukraine, Turkey and other countries for showing a movie on their channel, TV companies have to first apply to their ministries of culture, get a permission and license for showing it. I don’t mean prohibiting any films; these films are sold in their countries. States simply prohibit showing some films because of some certain standards. Mostly these are films containing with scenes showing violence and sex. In these countries films are classified in three groups: for everyone, for people over 16 and for people over 21. But things are different in Armenia. Recently the person responsible for showing films on the national TV channel was trying to justify himself in the press by saying that he was not the one to manage what films to show, but their management did this. As for their management, they choose films not on the basis of its artistic worth, but its reputation. This is the reason why they always show bad films.
We can already see that the competition for TV reputation is getting stronger in Armenia. Now TV companies are competing in showing new international formats. Now we see that the processes of globalization are developing rapidly in the world TV market. The capital of this market, which has made a lot of shows, is trying to sell these shows to different markets. Armenia is not alienated from this either. For instance, currently a TV channel is actively advertising that they will broadcast a show soon and will invite a very famous soccer player. According to the Georgian and Ukrainian press, this show was not successful in their markets because of its low artistic quality. And now it is Armenia’s turn and Armenians will have to watch it now. It is not right to blame TV companies in doing their best to attract more audiences by all means. The main aim of TV companies is to satisfy their audience. And it is not important for them whether their broadcasts that satisfy their audience are positive or negative. The only thing that TV companies don’t want is not to let people get disappointed about their programs and stop watching them. And here is the main point where the state has to regulate the field. But in spite of this the state is alienated from everything going on in this field. They don’t know what kinds of films are shown under the name “Night show” and what kind of results can movies showing violence and sex have.
Our officials visit foreign countries very often. And each time they come back to Armenia, they speak surprisingly about the broadcasts abroad, but they don’t make any efforts to do this in Armenia too.
According to the RA law on advertisements the corresponding bodies for controlling advertisement posters and other materials are local government bodies. As for the local government bodies, they pretend that they haven’t seen for example the half-naked women shown on the posters of Moscow cinema house. For men these pictures are not bad, but it is not good for families walking with their children to see such pictures and posters. Even more, you can always see posters advertising underwear in Yerevan. Now the heart of Yerevan looks more like the Red Light districts of some European cities. It has already been a long time that the feeling of possible income has become orienting in our civic life. For example showing prohibited advertisements on TV brings good income. It is a long time already that money has become the only standard and leading point of our culture and civic life.