Formula TV is cutting staff and reducing live programming even as its audience ratings soar, highlighting what the broadcaster describes as financial strangulation driven by Georgian Dream repression and growing self-censorship among businesses.
Formula host Irakli Kiknavelidze said journalists and other employees had been working for several months without any pay. Staff have also gone years without knowing when—or whether—they will receive their salaries in full.
Despite Formula’s growing audience and its frequent second- or third-place position in national ratings, that success has not translated into increased advertising. The channel says businesses are increasingly unwilling to advertise with government-critical media because they fear political consequences.
Formula has cancelled its early-morning live programme, moved the start of daily live broadcasting from 9 a.m. to noon and laid off part of its workforce.
Formula director and major shareholder Misha Mshvildadze said the cuts were necessary to prevent the channel from becoming unable to meet its obligations and ultimately shutting down.
“With these changes, we want to prevent a much greater drama,” he said, describing the restructuring as a painful step toward the channel’s survival.
Kiknavelidze attributed the squeeze to Georgian Dream laws restricting international funding, direct and indirect government pressure on businesses, and the actions of the Communications Commission, which recently fined Formula over language used in its news coverage.
“Our ratings have been growing over the past year to year and a half, but advertising revenues have not increased alongside them,” Kiknavelidze said. “There are very few businesses willing to bring their advertising to us.”
Formula often outperforms the heavily funded pro-government broadcaster Rustavi 2 and regularly ranks close behind Imedi, Georgia’s largest pro-government channel.
The broadcaster says its difficulties therefore reflect not a conventional financial crisis but a system in which political pressure and corporate self-censorship are depriving independent media of advertising income
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