A weekly TV program Shvidi Dge (Seven Days), which was produced by Akhali Droeba (New Times) studio and aired by the Georgian Public Broadcaster every Sunday evening, has been closed down.
Rusiko Tskhomelidze, founder of Akhali Droeba, said that the suspension of a one-year contract with GLTV, the firm providing technical support to the studio for production of the program, was the reason for the program’s closure .
Tskhomelidze said that GLTV was withdrawing its equipment, which was used by Akhali Droeba studio to produce the weekly program. The equipment, according to the contract, was handed over to the studio for a one-year term.
“Our one-year contract was suspended. The letter received from GLTV says that its equipment was held as collateral by another company and after it [GLTV] had failed to repay a debt, it had to hand over the equipment instead of paying the debt,” Rusiko Tskhomelidze told Civil.Ge on June 21. “We were not aware about this deal till now.”
She added that lawyers from the studio were currently studying the case.
Akhali Droeba studio was set up in early 2008 by former journalists from Imedi TV, who quitt the station following allegations that presidential candidate Badri Patarkatsishvili, the station’s founder, was plotting a coup.
Shvidi Dge program was produced mainly by journalists who worked for Imedi TV’s highly popular weekly program Droeba (Times) – the program which broke some high-profile stories, including the one involving the murder case of Sandro Girgvliani.
Shvidi Dge, however, was far from being a hard-hitting political program, with some of its journalists saying privately that stories were sometimes blocked by top management at the public TV.