Putin prohibits foreign companies from polling Russian television audiences
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting foreign companies and organizations from measuring the ratings of Russian TV Channels. The corresponding document was published on the official website of legal information. As stated in the document, foreign states, international organizations or organizations that are under their control, foreign legal entities and also Russian legal entities whose share of foreign capital is more than 20%, are not allowed to measure TV audiences.
The law also requires state accreditation for organizations that wish to conduct viewership studies on Russian TV audiences. The Special Commission of Roskomnadzor (Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) will carry out accreditation and also determine the number of organizations that will be authorized for measuring TV ratings. Accreditation shall be granted for a period of one year. Its term can be extended for one more year unless the Commission decides to revoke accreditation before it expires.
On the 22nd of June, the State Duma (Russian Parliament) adopted a draft law on implementing changes to the regulation of audience market research for TV channels. 424 deputies voted in favor of amendments to the laws on media and advertising while two deputies voted against them. The draft law was introduced into the State Duma on the 6th of June by the Deputy for the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Andrey Lugovoy.
TV Channels and advertisers supported the draft law but asked to postpone the amendments until early 2018. Otherwise, they stated that they would lose up to 40% of advertising revenue.