SATELLITE & CABLE: Mongolia prepares for the future with newly liberalised media environment

With a liberal media environment that welcomes direct foreign investment and a number of new newspapers, radio and TV stations, Mongolia is building a modern media infrastructure. With the advent of democracy in Mongolia 10 years ago has come the concept of freedom of the press; however the population of 2.5 million people has not yet managed to create a vibrant advertising market to fund media. Without financial independence, politics and business interests are funding media developments. Recent elections in July this year again showed that there were few ethics involved, according to one observer, and that there seems to be constant confusion between Party advertising and campaign news coverage. Besides numerous newspapers and radio stations, there are four TV stations in Ulan Bator. Several cable networks also supply a total of just 25,000 homes with relays of foreign satellite channels, including Star TV, MTV and the National Geographic Channel. State-owned Mongolian Television was founded in 1967 and has three channels. The first and only national channel broadcasts 7.5 hours in the Mongolian language every day, reaching 80 per cent of the 500,000 TV households. The other two channels broadcast Russian, American, French and Japanese programming fare without translation. Mongolian Television is the leading channel in Mongolia, according to a 1998 survey by the Press Institute of Mongolia, with an audience share of 63 per cent. Ranked in second and third are Ulan Bator TV (UBTV) and Channel 25, receiving 36 per cent and 29 per cent of audience market share respectively in 1998. UBTV is run by the municipality of Ulan Bator, while Channel 25 is a private broadcaster owned by the Mongol News Group, which also owns two newspapers, Unooder and the UB Post, as well as JAAG Radio. Mongol News Group is owned by Mongolia's own media mogul, Mr Baldorj, who is also a member of the newly-elected Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. But vested interest groups in Mongolian broadcasting are not limited to politics and business. Eagle TV was created five years ago as a JV between missionaries from South Dakota and the founder of the Mongolian Social Democratic Party. According to Mr Paul Swatzendruber, general director of Eagle TV, the missonaries provided US$1.5 million in funding for the TV station, and in return are entitled to broadcast four hours of religious programming every day. However, Eagle TV has not only a Christian agenda, but has invested in producing unbiased news: "We were the first in the country to train people to produce unbiased news," said Mr Swatzendruber. At the same time, there have also been successful efforts to develop a truly independent media in Mongolia. These efforts were given a boost in 1998 with the enactment of the Law on Freedom of Media. This states that public media should be free and independent of the state; its organisations and officials and should be forbidden to control or censor public information. "Two state newspapers have been privatised and sold to the staff," said Mr Enkhbat, director of the Press Institute of Mongolia. "But we are still working towards an independent broadcast industry. Ideally, we would create an independent TV station with public funds like the BBC." For now, advertisers are taking a back seat and benefiting from the situation. "It is definitely an advertisers' market. More media is being established and is bringing the price down even more, while we also get free advertising for our products," said Mr David Reiner from Mongolia Star Melchers, which represents Johnson & Johnson and Mercedes Benz in Mongolia. However, international aid organisations have big plans for Mongolia, intending to connect the country to the information super highway, seen as the most effective catalyst for the sluggish economy. For this reason, the Gobi Desert is now being fully integrated into the 24-hour global marketplace. Radio station Gobi Wave now broadcasts up-to-the-minute market movements for cashmere, goatskins and foreign exchange market and the Gobi's first Internet cafe has also opened for students to liaise with Mongolian students abroad on a dedicated website. Source: CMM Intelligence.

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