For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
May 24, 2002
Fact Sheet: Media Entrepreneurship Dialogue
Russian-American Media Entrepreneurship Dialogue
Since Presidents Bush and Putin launched it in November 2001, the
Russian-American Media Entrepreneurship Dialogue has met several times,
both in Russia and in the United States. The purpose of this Dialogue
is to improve business conditions that can support free and independent
private journalism. American participants traveled to Russia in March
2002 to meet with their Russian counterparts to discuss the state of
the Russian media and possible areas of cooperation. In April, the
American coordinators, the National Association of Broadcasters, and
the Newspaper Association of America hosted Russian Dialogue
participants at their annual conventions and held further discussions.
The Dialogue is convening a meeting in Moscow coincident with the
meeting of the two Presidents, and representatives will have an
opportunity to brief the two Presidents on progress to date.
- Four working groups have been formed to address industry
constraints and solutions in the areas of industry structure, content,
economic base, and technology.
- The Russian side is preparing a "state of the industry" report
that aims to provide a comprehensive look at the ownership and economic
control of the national and regional media in Russia for the May 20-24
meetings in Moscow.
- Dialogue participants expect to deliver specific
recommendations to the U.S. and Russian Governments in June.
- The participants are expected to address the following issues
during their May meetings:
- Industry supervision of measurement (ratings, readership,
circulation audits), crucial for advertising sales and programming;
- Regulatory and legislative conditions for commercial media
vis-à-vis the Russian state-controlled media;
- Association-building; and
- Evolving business models will be studied and discussed based
on American experience in cross-media partnerships, changes in TV
network-affiliate relations, and planning for the transition to digital
and HDTV formats.
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