Fight Is Vowed by Russian TV Staff

Crestfallen staff of the last nationwide television network free of Kremlin control vowed Tuesday to fight to reopen it, but within hours of TV6’s closure, the station’s frequency was allotted to an all-sports station tempting viewers with the promise of live coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Mass Communications Minister Mikhail Y. Lesin said the frequency used by TV6 until it was shut down early Tuesday had been given temporarily to NTV Plus pending a formal March 27 tender to determine the final licensee. The quick transfer of the frequency suggested that a plan had been in place even before TV6 was ordered closed.

TV6 staff members, some of whom continued to broadcast news Tuesday over the Echo of Moscow radio station, said they will seek to line up investors and mount a bid for the new license. But the mood was funereal in the aftermath of the station’s abrupt demise.

“Frankly speaking, after what has happened overnight, I have no particular illusions as to the outcome of the tender,” said station director general Yevgeny Kiselyov, interviewed on his former station, NTV. “The license will most likely be granted to someone else, because the authorities have demonstrated that they cannot abide this very team of journalists.”

Closure of TV6 set off a mild debate among the nation’s politicians, but there was no sharp public reaction like the demonstrations of support that occurred last March and April when the state-controlled gas monopoly moved to take over NTV, which was owned by anti-Kremlin oligarch Vladimir A. Gusinsky. (Many journalists who resigned in that controversy moved to TV6.)

There was a general mood of resignation that the Kremlin was determined to get rid of TV6, which is owned by oligarch Boris A. Berezovsky, an avowed political enemy of President Vladimir V. Putin. Its journalists had long been a thorn in the side of the government for sometimes caustic satire and a willingness to present an unauthorized view of the government’s war against rebels in the republic of Chechnya and on other delicate issues.

Boris Y. Nemtsov, head of the Union of Right Forces, a pro-market party, said the journalists were bystanders in the fight between Putin and Berezovsky. “Putin was fighting Berezovsky, but it is TV viewers and the journalists who have fallen victims,” he said.

TV6, whose closure came about after a legal campaign by the Lukoil pension fund, a minority stockholder, employed about 1,200 people and had 160 affiliate stations across Russia. On Tuesday, the local stations were at a loss to decide what to air, but most were expected to opt for Lesin’s choice of NTV Plus.

Berezovsky, speaking from London, where he moved to avoid Russian prosecutors, complained in a televised interview that his access to his company has been blocked and that he is not even able to send money to help pay expenses and salaries.

He praised the ousted staffers, saying they “with fortitude created a super-professional TV company over a very short period of time.”

Eduard M. Sagalayev, president of the Russian National Assn. of TV and Radio Broadcasters, said the blacking out of TV6 should be kept in perspective.

“I would not say that the freedom of speech in Russia has ended today. There are too many respected journalists who work for other channels and companies--and there are 2,500 of them in Russia--to make it possible to say that only one channel is the embodiment of the freedom of speech,” Sagalayev said on NTV. “However, there may be a domino effect. After this channel and that channel have been finished off, the same may happen in the regions.”

One small group of people affected by the TV6 closure were the participants in Russia’s first graphic TV reality show, “Behind the Glass.” The wildly popular program had just launched a new series four days ago with 12 fresh contestants.

Told that TV6 was no longer on the air, the contestants decided to keep playing for prizes anyway. But now they will only be seen in the Internet edition of the show.