ASK THE DIRECTOR

Vladimir Zelezny

NOVA TV, 1st February, 1997


"Well, this programme still exists, I will go on openly answering your questions because this is my right. It is my right to use my freedom of speech.

All those complaints that if I say something here, somebody else should be sitting here and should have the right to answer back, or that they should have the right to answer back at some other time, this is absurd.

This does not happen in any television station anywhere in the world, it does not happen in any country, not even the freest country. It is simply impossible. This is my personal programme. This is a programe from the category of self-promotion, self-advertising, which is used by any TV station. "


Question from Mr. Rygl, Prague: Will you comment of the "affair about the silly clown"? Question from Mr. Janda, Decin: You barred Czech public service TV from your news conference. Do you think this was proper?

Mrs. Dvorakova, Prague 10: Dear Chief Executive. I have just watched the newsitem on Czech Public Service TV about you and it has made me really livid. Please, explain the whole thing properly to us in your programme ASK THE DIRECTOR. Why are they all attacking NOVA TV? We do not understand it.

Zelezny: The campaign directed against our station is trying to sew the seeds of doubt about our station into people' s minds. This is an unprecedentedly fierce campaign against us. The last campaign like this was unleashed in the 1970s by the communist regime against the Charter 77 dissidents. Of course, I am not making any parallels.

There are different kinds of accusations. Some private persons, I emphasise, totally private persons are saying that there are problems with NOVA TV's ownership. Such assertions are absurd. They are basing their accusations on information published by NOVA TV itself.

(But not in the Czech Republic, where Zelezny has been making statements, conflicting with official information released by CME for the Security and Exchange Commission, Translator' s Note.)

We are a company which says everything quite openly. This is because we have an American co-owner. (CME is NOT an American company, Translator's Note.)

Americans are represented both in CET 21 and in NOVA TV, well to be exact, it is a company which is registered in many countries, among other things in Holland (Zelezny fails to mention Bermuda and the Netherlands Antilles, which some stock market observers regard as tax havens, Translator' s Note.)

Thus we could proudly say that we are a European station. I do not want to bother you with details. That's why I do not want to talk about it for a long time. nevertheless, I want to say that our company is quoted on the stock exchange in the United States, in New York. This places incredible demands on our company. We must publish absolutely everything about ourselves. We must publish everything, every contract, which could influence the interests of the shareholders.

Thus all that information which those people have found with such a great surprise somewhere on the Internet - and they talk about the Internet as though it was the X-files, as though it was something incredibly mysterious - well, we ourselves have placed all these details on the Internet, of course.

(This information is incorrect. CME is dutibound by law to submit quarterly and annual reports to the US Security and Exchange Commission and it is the Commission which makes it available on the Internet.Translator' s Note.)

I could draw complicated diagrams here, about who owns what in which company. We have, very correctly, published all this information. After all this information is based on the licensing procedures, based on the recommendations of the Council, all the percentages have been approved, so we do not need to be afraid of anything in this respect.

What is worse that all these attacks are being used against us to produce further attacks. When last week I mentioned a "silly fool", yes, this word was used in this programme, I will not apologise for this. I repeat, I said, "every silly fool can attack the honest work of the four hundred people who have built up this TV station." Yes, and I realy do mean "any silly fool". Because we feel that some views that get published are really wicked. They do not concern themselves with factual matters.

A very dangerous situation has arisen. It is a situation in which we have been given a warning by the Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting. The Council says that some time in the future, may be, it is all very conditional, it is really a quotation of what the Law allows rather than that the Council is taking measures against us.

The Council has attacked NOVA TV for producing unbalanced news coverage and unbalanced current affairs. They have failed to quote concrete programmes, concrete days, concrete minutes when we committed such an offence.

Such a general statement is dangerous for all television stations, for all the media in the Czech Republic, I must emphasise. Because the Council itself admits that it is very difficult to say what is and what is not balanced.

If the Council thought that this particular programme is not impartial, let me say a few words about this programme. We have created this programme because we wanted to be in touch with you. All TV stations have such programms, Czech public service TV has one, Prima TV has one, attractive young women appear in such programme on both stations. The programmes are recorded. Here, on NOVA TV, your Chief Executive speaks to you live, I sit here in order to be accountable to you, to respond to your questions, to improvise. And I am trying to be impersonal, of course, although this is very difficult.

So you have been with us for all that time during which we have been building this TV station. Maybe this programme will disappear. Maybe it will be banned. Maybe we ourselves will ban it, if it were to jeopardise the existence of this TV station. That is why we will ban it.

Because we do not want to risk that the Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting might attack us. But of course, they will find something else, those who want to beat us, they will always find a stick. You know all that very well indeed. We are a very attractive target.

Well, this programme still exists, I will go on openly answering your questions because this is my right. It is my right to use my freedom of speech.

All those complaints that if I say something here, somebody else should be sitting here and should have the right to answer back, or that they should have the right to answer back at some other time, this is absurd.

This does not happen in any television station anywhere in the world, it does not happen in any country, not even the freest country. It is simply impossible. This is my personal programme. This is a programe from the category of self-promotion, self-advertising, which is used by any TV station.

TV stations have the right to inform viewers about their programmes, about their problems, about the position, about whether they will be permitted to broadcast at all, and so on.

Mine is an ordinary programme. All TV stations in the world have a programme such as mine. It is absurd to say that my programme is something special. There is nothing special in the fact that the Chief Executive answers viewers' questions.

What else shall I say. About Czech public service TV. A viewer asks me why we did not allow Czech public service TV to our news conference.

It was not a news conference. We were just giving out information. We did not want the information we gave out to be published the way we were giving it out because this was business information relating to our company.

(No secret information was given. Vladimir Zelezny gave a highly personal version of the investment history of CET 21 and CNTS NOVA. Translator's Note.)

This is why we invited certain journalists from the media which we thought might be interested and we gave them certain business information, so that they could not say, if they wrote some nonsense, that they had not been informed.

(Zelezny barred journalists from the dailies Prace, Slovo, the weekly Tyden and Czech TV cameras from entering the "non-press conference". All these media had published critical analyses of ownership changes in NOVA TV and CET 21. A couple of employees from Czech public service TV managed to get into the "non-press conference" nevertheless. Translator's Note.)

By a coincidence, two people from Czech television came to this information meeting and Czech TV hid this. It is natural that we did not allow their camera in. We were not giving public information.

Nevertheless, both gentlemen were sitting there for the whole meeting with great interest. It was Head of CzTV publicity and was CzTV journalist. And we did not kick them out. So this is yet more distorted information.

We go on broadcasting, the silly clowns will continue interfering, because whatever is successful in this country, a silly clown will always want to try to stop it. If he does so as a private person, we must allow him to do so, that is his right. It would be worse if these private persons hid themselves behind an official institution, that would be much worse.

I have used the expression "a silly clown" only in general terms. If somebody has taken it to mean him, that is nothing more but his personal interpretation.

......

Another question from our listeners. Does TV NOVA contribute any money to charity? Look (footage of disabled people working, choral singing on the sound track) we have given a million crowns (40 000 dollars) to the Duha Foundation, which integrates disabled people into society. Look here, you can see me signing the cheque for the million crowns for the DUHA Foundation.

We support a lot of charitable institutions. But we feel we do not want to boast about it because our charitable work should not be publicised. Then you see it would be sponsorship and we are not interested in sponsorship, we are interested in charitable work.

Our third anniversary is drawing near. How shall we celebrate it? We will celebrate by our special programme Cockldoodledoos, you have seen our trailers. And we will celebrate our most popular personalities. Then, there will be a live broadcast of the competition, run by the Anno popular magazine in cooperation with us.

We will celebrate our anniversary modestly, by working. We are looking forward to being with you for four years, five years, six years, seven years. We look forward to being able to see you like this for many years to come, to being able to answer openly your questions like this, the way we are attempting to do so now.

Have a nice time and see you next week.