Two-thirds of television media services that are not under state jurisdiction and are retransmitted in the Republic of Moldova broadcast entirely or partially in Russian, according to the study “The media market in the Republic of Moldova: realities and trends in 2025,” released by the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) in July. Expert Ion Bunduchi, one of the authors of the study, describes as worrying the situation in which the official language of the state is marginalized in program schedules.
According to the data, 408 television media services that are not under state jurisdiction are retransmitted in the Republic of Moldova, including generalist and news channels, as well as thematic channels (from films and music to channels dedicated to children or sports). Of these, two-thirds (67%) broadcast entirely or partially in Russian. Although the retransmitted channels are in 12 languages, Russian is predominant, being present in the schedules of 261 of the 389 channels analysed according to the language of broadcast.
The authors point out that the television media services retransmitted in the Republic of Moldova come from 20 countries and are available to the public via cable and IPTV networks. The data show that 186 channels, or 45.5%, are from the Russian Federation, 87 (equivalent to 21.3%) from Romania, 21 from the United Kingdom, 20 from the Netherlands, and 19 from Ukraine. Another 75 channels come from the US, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On the other hand, 19 channels that were not included in the top broadcast content in one or more languages, including Turkish, Czech, German, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Russian. In the case of 10 of these, Russian is used alongside other languages, in combinations such as Ukrainian/Russian/English, Romanian/Russian/English/Czech, Russian/English/Turkish, or Russian/English/Arabic/Portuguese.
EXPERT ARGUMENTS
Media expert Ion Bunduchi, co-author of the study, argues that the figures should be viewed in the context of what we call the process of integration into society or the process of social segregation.
“If out of the 408 television media services retransmitted in the national audiovisual space, but which are not under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Moldova, almost 70 percent have Russian as their broadcast language/soundtrack, we are witnessing an abnormal situation. It is not and should not be the case that a language other than the state language prevails in television media services and in the media in general. When TV channels are broadcast in 12 languages, it would seem that Moldovan viewers have a choice. In reality, however, it is like in a supermarket—we do not choose what we want, but choose from what is available, and the full shelves give us the illusion that we have found exactly what we wanted,” explained the executive director of the Electronic Press Association for Media Today.
According to the expert, linguistic diversity in the audiovisual sector is not a problem in itself, but on the contrary, it can encourage the learning of other languages and openness to new cultural perspectives. Concerns arise when one of these languages dominates excessively and the official language of the state is marginalized in the program schedules. “This is bad because, on the one hand, it perpetuates the myth that everyone in Moldova knows Russian and, on the other hand, it keeps many people in a bilingual or, worse, monolingual information bubble,” he said.