TV and Radio: freedom of speech?

Come to Pridnestrovie, tune in and see for yourself: Here, viewers and listeners get different points of view without any form of censorship whatsoever.

The two main TV stations in Pridnestrovie are "TSV" (private) and "TV-PMR" (state-owned). In addition, most of European satellite TV can be seen in the country and a large cable network operator, MultiTV, offers packages with between 9 and 35 channels depending on the subscriber's preferences.

The oldest TV station in the country is TV PMR which went on the air in 1992. It produces 28 original programs: news, children’s, sports, youth’s, entertainment and religious broadcasts. The station broadcasts in 3 languages; Moldavian, Russian and Ukrainian. It has 6 studios, two control rooms, a mobile studio, ten editing booths and an advertising department. With a staff of 157 employees, TV-PMR broadcasts nearly 600 hours per month: The volume of its broadcasting is about 19 hours per day, of which 6 hours is original in-house programming.

There are four main private radio stations in Pridnestrovie, in addition to a number of nonprofit community services and local stations. Like their TV counterparts, none of the radio stations are under any kind of censorship. In fact, to draw listeners some of them have learned that the more controversial a program they create, the more people tune in. The result is a sometimes extremely hardhitting political debate and very strong criticism of Pridnestrovie's democratically elected government (some say that the criticism is too strong, but there are no calls for curtailing the free debate on the airwaves).

If you want to listen to Pridnestrovian radio online, an experimental media server is broadcasting the following four radio station at regular intervals:

• Inter FM 107.7 (Listen: Live streaming)
• Dynamite FM
• EnergyRadio.FM
• Frequence3

When online, the playsheet ("pls"-file) can be opened in either Winamp of XMMS at the following URLs:
isp.idknet.com/media/radio/inet_radio.pls and
www.dot-link.net/radio.pls

Both TV- and radio stations in Pridnestrovie itself has broadcasts in the Moldavian language. This includes the public state TV station which also employs ethnic Moldavians in top level positions.

There is also no discrimination or censorship against radio or TV programs from Moldova. Moldovan TV stations, such as "M1" and "ProTV", are freely available in Pridnestrovie. The government does not engage in any form of blocking or muting the transmissions from Moldova. Pridnestrovian mass media is under censorship in Moldova, however, no one can with a straight face claim anymore that the opposite is still the case.

Depending on your point of view, official state-run "Radio PMR" is either a blast from the past which reminds you of Cold War propaganda ... or else it is a way for emigrants and their descendants to stay in touch with news from back home. Whatever your preferred label, tune in with an open mind and decide for yourself. Radio PMR from Tiraspol is transmitted on shortwave to listeners in Europe and North America, with daily news and updates in a variety of languages including English. They broadcast live every day at 4 pm GMT on frequency 6,235 kHz shortwave, 49 meter band. The station transmits daily news and information about Pridnestrovie from a powerful transmitter located within the national borders of the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica.

The English-language segment lasts 20 minutes and starts at 1700 UTC on 6,235 kHz in North America at this time. A frequent listener in Madrid, Spain, uploaded a video on You Tube of his Sony ICF-77 tuning into Radio PMR:

The QSL address for Radio PMR is: Radio DMR, Rosa Luxembourg Str 10,
Tiraspol 3300, Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica

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