P. M. BRIEFING - Soviet TV Firm to Air U.S. Films

An independent company has been formed to break the staid government television’s monopoly, and it has gained rights to show outside programming, including 5,000 U.S. films, a report said today.

“There must not be a monopoly, there must be freedom of choice for both journalists and viewers,” Nikolai I. Lutsenko, the president of the Nika TV company, told the weekly newspaper Nedelya.

The company is working on its own programming in several provincial cities and hopes to be on the air regularly in about a year, the report said.

Lutsenko told Nedelya that he recently had been to the United States to pick up the rights to show U.S. films in the Soviet Union. “In Hollywood, I concluded two contracts according to which we obtained the rights to 5,000 of the best American films,” he said.