TVi (TV channel)

TVi launched on 17 March 2008, and was set up by two exiled Russian businessmenn: Vladimir Gusinsky and Konstantin Kagalovsky.[7] They split due to a business dispute but Kagalovsky continued to fund TVi.[7]

According to Ukrainian media watchdog Telekrytyka TVi and 5 Kanal were the only remaining TV channels in mid-May 2010 with independent and fair TV news coverage.[8]

The President of TVi was Vitaly Portnikov.[9][10]

(Former) Chairman of the Editorial Board Mykola Knyazhytsky was placed at number 10 on the electoral list of Batkivshchyna during the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[11][12] He was elected into parliament and Knyazhytsky left TVi immediately after.[12][13]

Reception of TVi was available throughout the whole country of Ukraine. TVi was available on more than 90% of cable networks in Ukraine. Having a lot of partner agreements with regional companies TVi was available Free To Air in Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Kryvyi Rih, Mykolaiv, Simferopol, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Melitopol. TVi was not granted a digital license in the summer of 2011; meaning that TVi would be shown through existing cable and satellite networks have access to about 45% of Ukraine’s population (while the selected channels will have more than 90 percent nationwide coverage) from the autumn of 2011.[7] TVi claimed that the reason it was denied a digital license is because of its critical approach to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.[7]

In June 2010 a video was filmed of a vehicle parked outside the TV station monitoring its activities. When the three occupants of the vehicle were asked what they were doing, they hid their faces and refused to answer questions. They then drove off, driving through a red light. TVi general director Mykola Kniazhytsky accused the SBU, Ukraine's main security agency, of carrying out this surveillance. Reporters Without Borders has condemned this as harassment.[18]

In April 2012, TVi accused government officials of trying to disrupt and shut down the station. This was in response to tax officials allegedly probing its businesses relationships with entrepreneurs who fund the station. On April 25, 2012, tax officials delivered letters requesting contractual and other documents at the residences of at least three entrepreneurs that relate to their business dealings with TVi. Director Kniazhytsky accused the tax officials of 'bullying', and 'behaving like thugs'.[19] In August 2012 these charges were dropped. Assessed at that time, one report noted relative to the station's independence that it has an editorial board that includes Poland's Adam Michnik and, "[c]rucially, says ... Kniazhytsky, TVi's owner has no other business interests in Ukraine."[20]

On November 22, 2011, TVi Europe was launched, and it was the first Ukrainian and Polish TV channel broadcast via satellite. The channel was broadcast in Ukraine and other European countries, and its billionaire owner Konstantin Kagalovsky had reportedly invested $5 million into the new channel.[21]

Every day TVi presented two 1-hour slots of the new production documentaries from National Geographic, AETN, Discovery. TVi produces 10 hours per week of own production that correlites to nationalwide Ukrainian channels:

• List of Ukrainian language television channels

• Official website Archived 2014-08-29 at the Wayback Machine (in Ukrainian)
• English version of one report in an episode of Exclamation mark (Знак оклику) on YouTube