Channel 25 is a small TV station operating in the seaside town of Batumi. While the town has gained international attention recently for the frenzied facelift it is undergoing, it remains a city that, as with the rest of Georgia, is still in transition to democracy. Channel 25 has been successfully documenting that transition for its audience for the last 18 years through its reporting. At the same time, the station underwent its own struggles. It’s history is full of questionable suspensions of their signal, office foreclosures and other run-ins with local authorities. Despite those obstacles they have managed to stay on the air and fight for their goal to inform the citizens of Batumi and nearby villages.
Channel 25 participates in the new IREX-implemented Georgian Media Partnership Program [7], funded by the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy in Georgia. The program partners with WDBJ7, a local television station in Roanoke, Virginia in the United States. Through professional exchanges, the two stations will develop a relationship that will help Channel 25 improve the quality of their newscasts and their financial sustainability, and will introduce WDBJ7 [8]to their media colleagues on the other side of the globe.
The first partnership visit took place in Batumi in the beginning of June. WDBJ senior correspondent Joe Dashiell [9] and chief engineer John Thomas spent the week getting to know their Georgian colleagues, consulting on a number of issues facing the stations, and getting a taste for Georgian culture. Among the topics the Georgian professionals were most interested in learning about was live broadcasting. Since satellite technology is quite expensive, Dashiell and Thomas proposed using Skype. In less than an hour, the Channel 25 journalists were able to set up a professional video camera with an Internet connection via a laptop and free wi-fi to broadcast live reports back to the station.
“Participation in this program is very important for us,” said Merab Merkviladze, the director and co-owner of the station. “First, because of the outline of the program - like no other program, gives all our employees an opportunity to interact with the American partners, exchange information, ask questions, listen to their advice and actually work with them.”
The two stations also learned that they shared much in common. “Although there are a lot of differences between our countries we were able to find and draw quite an amount of similarities as well,” Merviladze said. “The most amazing thing for us was to discover that WDBJ also started from scratch and became a professional media outlet. It gave us determination and hope that in several years Channel 25 can also become a TV station like WDBJ.”
In August four representatives of Channel 25 will visit their partner TV station in Roanoke, VA. In total there will be four reciprocal exchange visits within the period of 10 months, two in Georgia and two in the United States to increase the Georgian station’s professionalism and build stronger ties between both broadcasters.
The video below is Dashiell's report for WDBJ on his trip to Georgia.