Straight

In May 2017, Ukrainian politician Vladimir Makeenko became the sole owner of Direct TV channel, having bought 80% of the shares from Tonis , 10% from the channel’s director general, and 0.5% from his deputy. The entire authorized capital of the channel since 2010 has been 16 million 731 thousand 250 UAH ^[4] . Prior to this, a team of managers from NewsOne TV channel headed by Alexei Semenov (who was involved in launching and restarting channels 112 Ukraine (2013-2014) and NewsOne (2015-2017 ^[5] )), including high-budget journalists Matvey Ganapolsky and Yevgeny Kiselyov ^{[6 ]} , switched to the TV channel. ^] and the presenters: Anatoly Anatolich , Vasilisa Frolova , Julia Shpachinsky, Snezhana Egorova , Carolina Ashion, Svetlana Orlovskaya and others. The new channel was aimed at the age category 40+ ^[7] .

On August 24, 2017, on the Independence Day of Ukraine ^[7] , the Tonis television channel was replaced by the Direct television information channel ^[8] .

In December 2017, the Direct television channel became the property of the Cypriot company Parlimo Trading Limited, a stake in which through the Cypriot company Centerano Trading Limited was owned by Dadlaw Nominees Limited, a secretary company, which, after the change of power, became a co-owner of the Ukrainian National Lottery lottery. The lottery operator himself was associated with the environment of Petro Poroshenko ( Boris Lozhkin , Alexander Tretyakov and Gleb Zagory ^[9] ).

In December 2018, at a regional digital competition in the Odessa region, a new local television channel, Odesa 1, owned by Vladimir Makeenko (99%, through the legal entity Direct Direct Company TK Direct) and Evgenia Zakharova (1%) received a broadcast license in the region. At the end of January 2019, the newly created TV channel “Kharkiv 1” from the Direct group received digital broadcasting licenses in the Kharkov region , its owners were Makeenko (90%) and Zakharova (10%). Both channels were supposed to start broadcasting within a year, by September 2018 it had not yet begun ^[10] .

In the summer of 2018, it became known about the channel’s plans to create a Direct FM radio station, which involved relaying the television broadcast and its own programs with the channel’s journalists. In July, Direct applied to the National Council for calculating 61 FM frequencies in major cities of the country. By April 2019, the station had frequencies in Kiev, Dnepropetrovsk , Donetsk , Zaporizhzhya , Lugansk and Poltava regions ^{[11] [10]} .

In January 2019, there was a re-switching of Channel 5 and Direct on the DVB-T2 network. As a result, Direct switched to the MX-2 multiplex, and Channel 5 switched to the MX-5 multiplex. ^[12]

After the defeat of Petro Poroshenko in the second round of the presidential election, Andrei Portnov , who worked in the administration of President Viktor Yanukovych, returned to Ukraine after leaving Euromaidan . From mid-May 2019, he began to file complaints against the politician with the State Bureau of Investigation, one of which was devoted to the purchase of Direct ^[13] .

On June 3, 2019, it became known that the producer Alexey Semenov ^{[14] [5]} , who transferred to the post of head of the Novosti holding business partner and political ally Viktor Medvedchuk Taras Kozak , left the TV channel (combined 112 Ukraine , NewsOne and ZIK ^[15] )

On June 24, its leading Svetlana Orlovskaya became the acting general producer and director general of the channel. The closed meeting of the labor collective dedicated to this event with Vladimir Makeenko was also attended by Petro Poroshenko and People's Deputy Victoria Syumar , who worked in the current parliamentary elections in the campaign headquarters of the European Solidarity Party. According to her, the former head of state received an option in the event of a possible sale of the channel ^{[16] [17] [18]} .

The channel was criticized for the PR of the current government and President Petro Poroshenko , combined with criticism and attacks against his opponents in the 2019 elections like Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Zelensky (Matvey Ganapolsky was especially active in this area). The channel also noted the PR of the pro-Russian presidential candidate Yuri Boyko ^{[19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27]} .

Since November 2018, the “Vata Show” program has been broadcast on the Direct by blogger Andrei Karpov , who talks with residents of Russia and the ORDLO in ChatRoulette on political topics using obscene language and insults. Gala Sklyarevskaya, a journalist for the Detector Media publication, criticized the show and compared it to the “Russian television product” and noted that “watching both is equally embarrassing ^[28] .”

In March 2019, the National Council’s Commission on Television and Radio Broadcasting issued a “public condemnation” to “Direct” for covering a sociological study regarding presidential candidates, in the story it was about “a potential increase in Poroshenko’s rating” ^[29] . According to the results of the March monitoring of television channels during the presidential election, Direct and Channel 5 received the largest number of violations of the electoral law ^[30] .

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