About Tert.am

Tert.am

Tert.am is a national online news website based in Yerevan, Armenia, founded in 2008. Its name derives from the Armenian word tert, meaning newspaper, and from its launch it presented itself as a new kind of Armenian newspaper for the internet age: multi-genre, updated continuously and published in Armenian, English and Russian. Headquartered in Yerevan, Tert.am grew into one of Armenia's most visited and most cited news sites, and its ownership history, through Media Style, the PanArmenian Media Group and Quartet Media, offers a compact case study in how Armenian online media, politics and business have intertwined.

Tert.am continues to operate, including its Tert.am Life and Tert.am Medicine sections, though reference reporting notes reduced activity compared with its peak years. This profile records what can be verified about its founding, innovation, audience, ownership changes and present position, distinguishing documented facts from claims that belong to the site's own earlier promotional descriptions.

Launch in 2008 and the Multi-Genre Idea

Tert.am was launched in 2008 by Media Style LLC in Yerevan. The Media Ownership Monitor Armenia records that the Tert news website was launched in 2008 by Media Style LLC, founded and wholly owned by Arman Sahakyan, who later served as a Member of Parliament for the Republican Party of Armenia. The seed record for this profile likewise attributes the founding to Media Style LLC in 2008. From the beginning, Tert.am was available in three languages, Armenian, Russian and English, matching the trilingual pattern that studies identify as characteristic of Armenian online media.

The site described itself, and was described in reference entries, as the first news website in Armenia to introduce the multi-genre internet media format in 2008. In practice that meant combining hard news, politics, business, science and technology, culture, sport and lifestyle in a single portal, rather than specialising in one beat. Its news was categorised into sections covering Armenia and domestic developments, the region including the South Caucasus, Iran and Turkey, world news, business in Armenia and globally, science and technology and high technology, culture, and lifestyle including entertainment news and interviews, with a video section as well. That structure is still recognisable in Armenian portals today, which is part of Tert.am's historical significance.

Early Innovation: Mobile and Apps

Tert.am positioned itself as a progressive outlet inclined to innovative trends, and its early technology milestones are documented in its reference history. It was the first on Armenia's online media market to launch a mobile version, in May 2010. From May 2011 it operated an Android version for smartphones and tablet computers, and in the same period the site became available to iPhones and iPads. In a country where internet access was rapidly shifting to mobile devices, early investment in mobile formats helped Tert.am convert its editorial reach into habitual daily use.

The audience figures preserved in reference sources belong to that growth period and should be read as historical, not current. As of February 2014, the website was reported to attract 150,000 visitors daily, and it was described as the most popular website in Armenia in terms of frequency of visits, citations and references. As of June 2016, Tert.am had about thirty employees. No comparably sourced current daily audience figure is available in open reference material, so this profile does not present a present-day traffic number. The historical figures nevertheless establish that at its peak Tert.am was not a niche site but one of the central gateways through which Armenians read news online.

Ownership: From Media Style to Tert Am LLC

Ownership is where Tert.am's record becomes detailed and politically significant. The Media Ownership Monitor Armenia records that in 2013 ownership transferred to the newly established Tert Am LLC, which purchased the website. The seed record for this profile uses the name TERT AM LLC for the same stage. This transfer separated the site formally from its founding company while keeping it within Armenia's commercial media market.

Media guides, including the Harvard Caspiana media guide cited in the seed record, have listed Tert.am among outlets affiliated with the Republican Party of Armenia. Readers should understand what such listings do and do not claim. They describe perceived or documented affiliation in a media system where ownership, party networks and editorial sympathy often overlap; they are not a claim that every Tert.am article was dictated by a party. The founder's later service as a Republican Party Member of Parliament, and the site's later inclusion in holdings associated with figures close to the former ruling establishment, are the documented facts on which such characterisations rest.

The PanArmenian Media Group Years

In May 2014 Tert.am joined the Pan-Armenian Media Group, described in reference sources as a major media holding in Armenia, and from 2015 to 2019 it operated as part of the PanArmenian Media Group conglomerate. According to the Media Ownership Monitor Armenia, that conglomerate included the television channels Armenia TV, A-TV, ArmNews and PanArmenian TV in the United States, the websites Tert.am and Blognews.am, and the radio stations Radio Jan and Lav Radio. According to press reports summarised by the monitor, the group's ultimate beneficial owner was Mikayel Minasyan, son-in-law of Armenia's third President Serzh Sargsyan and former Ambassador to the Vatican.

Membership in that group placed Tert.am at the centre of the most powerful private media structure of Armenia's pre-2018 period, with cross-promotion across television, radio and online properties and a shared position within the political economy of the Sargsyan era. It also meant that when Armenia's politics changed in 2018, and when the group itself dissolved in 2019, Tert.am's ownership and prospects changed with them. The PanArmenian period is therefore essential to any honest history of the site: its peak audience years and its group years substantially overlap.

Quartet Media and the Post-2019 Transition

When the PanArmenian Media Group dissolved in 2019, several of its assets, including ArmNews TV, Lav Radio and Tert.am, were transferred to the newly created Quartet Media CJSC, known in the seed record as Qaryak Media. The Media Ownership Monitor Armenia records that Quartet Media was founded by four prominent political figures, all former Republican Party Members of Parliament: Mihran Hakobyan, Karen Bekaryan, Samvel Farmanyan and Arman Saghatelyan. The company's name reflected its four founders, and it operated across television, radio and online news for approximately three years.

In 2022 Quartet Media announced it was suspending operations. ArmNews TV's licence was subsequently terminated, while Radio 107 FM, the successor radio asset in the group, and Tert.am initially announced plans to continue independently. In January 2025 Radio 107 FM's broadcast licence was also terminated due to financial difficulties. Tert.am, as an online property requiring no broadcast licence, was able to continue in a way its broadcast siblings could not, a practical illustration of why online media have proved more durable than licensed television in Armenia's shifting political market.

Present Status and Ownership Questions

The most recent ownership reporting available, from the Media Ownership Monitor Armenia, states that Tert.am continues to operate, including its Tert.am Life and Tert.am Medicine sections, though with reduced activity compared to previous years. Tert.am Medicine and Tert.am Life were launched in October 2015 and were available only in Armenian, extending the multi-genre model into health and lifestyle verticals. Their continuation signals that Tert.am retains a publishing operation beyond its core news pages.

The same reporting records an unresolved ownership question. Tert.am director Aram Antinyan announced a proposal to acquire ownership of Tert.am and Radio 107 FM from Quartet Media, but the State Register of Legal Entities showed Quartet Media CJSC remaining the one hundred percent owner of both entities at the time of that research. This profile reports that position as documented and does not claim a later transfer that cannot be verified from open sources. For readers and researchers, the lesson is to check the State Register for the current position rather than relying on announcements of intent.

Content, Sections and Languages Today

Tert.am publishes in Armenian, English and Russian. Its historic section structure covered Armenia, the region, the world, business, science and technology, culture and lifestyle, with video as a distinct offering. That breadth reflects the original multi-genre promise: a reader could follow a parliamentary debate, a regional security development, an exchange-rate movement and a cultural premiere in one visit. The Life and Medicine sub-brands added service and health content aimed at everyday readers rather than political audiences alone.

In practice, Armenian general portals compete on speed, volume and search visibility, and Tert.am's reduced activity, as noted by ownership researchers, means its present output should not be confused with its peak-era output of the mid-2010s. What remains verifiable is continuity: the domain, the brand, the trilingual publishing and the vertical sections persist. Anyone assessing Tert.am today should sample its current Armenian, English and Russian homepages directly rather than assuming that descriptions written in 2014 still describe its daily volume.

Place in Armenian Online Media History

Armenian media histories list Tert.am among the popular sites identified by the Circle.am monitoring centre, alongside Hetq, A1+, PanArmenian Network, News.am, ArmeniaNow, Armenia Today and Panorama.am. Similarweb-based rankings cited in media-landscape research for spring 2020 still placed Tert.am among Armenia's leading online information resources, behind News.am and a small group of other portals. That persistence in rankings across more than a decade marks Tert.am as one of the formative brands of Armenian digital news.

Its historical contributions are specific. It helped normalise the multi-genre portal in Armenia in 2008, moved early into mobile in 2010 and apps in 2011, demonstrated that an Armenian site could sustain a large daily online audience by 2014, and then passed through the full cycle of Armenian media ownership, from founder ownership to a president-linked holding to a post-revolution successor company. Few Armenian outlets illustrate so completely both the innovation and the political entanglement of the country's online media sector.

How to Read Tert.am Critically

Critical reading of Tert.am starts with its affiliations. Media guides have associated it with the Republican Party of Armenia, its founder became a Republican parliamentarian, and its group owners were figures of the former ruling establishment. That does not make its factual news unusable, but it does mean readers should compare its framing of Republican figures, of the post-2018 governments and of regional negotiations with coverage in independent outlets such as Hetq, CivilNet and Azatutyun.am, and in international media. Ownership transparency research exists precisely to enable that kind of comparison.

Readers should also separate the site's layers: agency-style short news, original reporting, opinion and lifestyle material do not all carry the same evidentiary weight. Checking whether a Tert.am item cites a named source, an official statement or another outlet, and whether the English and Russian versions match the Armenian original, are practical habits that apply to every Armenian trilingual portal and are especially useful with a high-volume site like Tert.am.

Assessment and Limits of the Record

For Tert.am, the documented record is strong on chronology: launch in 2008 by Media Style, transfer to Tert Am LLC in 2013, PanArmenian Media Group membership from 2014 and operation within it from 2015 to 2019, transfer to Quartet Media in 2019, Quartet's suspension in 2022, and continued online operation with reduced activity thereafter. It is also strong on early audience and staffing landmarks for 2014 and 2016. It is weak on the present: current staff, current daily audience and the final resolution of the proposed ownership acquisition are not verifiably documented in open sources consulted for this profile, and no figures have been invented to fill those gaps.

Tert.am endures as both a working news website and a historical marker. It marks the moment Armenian news became a portal business, the moment that business consolidated into political media holdings, and the moment those holdings broke apart while the websites lived on. Understanding Tert.am is therefore one of the shortest routes to understanding modern Armenian media as a whole.