Independence of Local TV Channels and Their Audience Dynamics "Moscow 24" and "Fox 5" cases

In a democracy it`s assumed, that informed citizenship is a core factor for the functioning of the body politic. Because informed citizen is motivated to engage the public sphere. Thus, the responsibility for informing citizens regarding the public policy issues of the day falls to the mass media. In fact, there is an explicit obligation to serve the public interest. .Thus, different types of media can have differential effects on civic activity or political knowledg, but they do enhance civic engagement. The obvious dependency of TV channel reinforces the belief about “the illusion of knowing” and it results into increasing recession of civic engagement. The first scheme with “virtuous circle” stops to work. Thus the problem of media dependency is really significant. It was described in many studies, but I`m focusing on the local TV channels and connection between the policy of TV Channel and it`s viewership dynamic. The research problem of my paper is the loss of audience and functions by local TV channels because of the high level of dependency.