About Shant TV

Shant TV

Shant TV is a private television broadcasting company in Armenia, founded by Arthur Yezekyan in Gyumri, the country's second-largest city, in 1994. It launched a full six-hour broadcasting schedule in May 1995, moved to Yerevan in 2001 and began regular nationwide broadcasting from the capital. Headquartered on Kievyan Street in Yerevan and broadcasting in Armenian, Shant TV is consistently counted among Armenia's most-watched and most-trusted channels. It is known nationally for its news service and for popular serials and entertainment formats including In the Army, In the City, Vitamin Club and Ellen's Diary. This profile sets out the verified record of the channel's founding, relocation, ownership, programming and standing, and notes the small discrepancies between sources where they occur.

Founding in Gyumri

Shant TV was founded in 1994 in Gyumri, in the Shirak region of north-western Armenia. Gyumri was still living with the consequences of the devastating 1988 earthquake, and the country as a whole faced hunger for information programmes and social tension. The channel's own documented history gives that context as the main reason the newly founded company specialised from the beginning in producing news and information programmes. It was, in other words, founded as a regional news service before it was an entertainment channel: the Media Ownership Monitor records that initially it was a news service available only in the Shirak region.

First Broadcasts and Early Diversification

In May 1995 Shant TV launched a full six-hour broadcasting schedule with daily Armenian programming. The company's early timeline, preserved in reference works, shows how a small regional station diversified under difficult conditions: in 1995 it launched a private weekly newspaper; in 1995 and 1996 it resorted at times to temporary coding of its signal during the energy crisis; from 1997 it produced humour and sketch material distributed among Armenians all over the world; and in 1998 it founded a private radio station. The Yerevan Press Club recorded Shant TV company marking the 10th anniversary of its first broadcast on 21 June 2004, counting that anniversary from Gyumri. Sources differ by a year on the Yerevan relocation — the channel's documented history and Wikipedia give 2001 for the move and the start of regular broadcasting, while the Media Ownership Monitor dates the relocation to 2000 with nationwide coverage following; this profile records both datings and treats 2000-2001 as the relocation period.

Relocation to Yerevan and Nationwide Broadcasting

The move to the capital transformed Shant from a respected regional station into a national competitor. After relocating to Yerevan, the channel gained popularity and trust over the following three years and started regular broadcasting nationwide. Its headquarters are on Kievyan Street in Yerevan, and its terrestrial position in the digital era is listed as DVB-T channel 3. Its picture formats are listed as 576i SDTV and 1080p HDTV, and it also developed satellite and online distribution aimed at diaspora viewers, with Armenian serials promoted through its web presence to Armenians abroad.

Shant's national growth took place in a market where, by the mid-2000s, nearly all Armenian television channels were linked to political or business elites. Shant's documented trajectory is distinctive within that market because its growth is attributed in independent monitoring to programming and audience trust rather than to party affiliation: it built a national audience first from Gyumri and then from Yerevan on the strength of news, serials and comedy.

Ownership and Company Structure

Shant TV is operated by Shant LLC. According to the Media Ownership Monitor Armenia, the company has two shareholders: Arthur Yezekyan, the founder, with 52 per cent, and Aram Mnatsakanyan with 48 per cent; some reference listings give the second owner's name in the form Armen Minas. The Monitor records that under Shant LLC's charter the company's governing bodies are the general meeting of participants and the company's executive body, the president. The general meeting can make final decisions on any issue, while current operations are managed by the president, who is elected by the participants and may conduct transactions on behalf of the company without separate authorisation up to a limit of 25 per cent of the company's net assets.

Governance, Finances and Industry Roles

The Monitor classifies Shant TV's ownership type as private, its geographic coverage as national and its content type as free. It also notes, as a matter of public record, that the company frequently appears in court with demands for forced collection of unpaid wages — a reminder that even Armenia's leading private channels operate in a financially difficult advertising market. More recently, Shant TV became a shareholder in the audience measurement company Mediahouse Armenia: after Public TV acquired a 50 per cent stake in Mediahouse in 2022, Shant TV purchased the remaining shares previously held by the company's founder, so that the measurement business came to be managed by interests including the public broadcaster and Shant. Shant is also recorded as one of the board members of the industry committee established after the 2024 reform of audience measurement, alongside H1, Armenia TV, Fast Sport and Kentron.

Programming: News, Serials and Comedy

News was Shant's founding specialism, and Shant News remains a core part of its schedule. On top of that foundation the channel built one of the strongest entertainment offers in Armenian television. The most popular shows documented for Shant TV include the serials The Surrogate Mother, Slave of Love, In the Army, In the City, Alien, Ellen's Diary and Secret Love, together with Overview of Abroad, Armenians of the World and the comedy show Vitamin Club. Earlier online listings also highlight serials such as Anurjner and Lialusin among the most popular Armenian serials available through Shant's web presence, and wider programme lists include 32 Teeth, Women's Club and Sport Club among its shows.

Two titles illustrate the channel's range. In the Army used a military setting for popular drama at a time when army service was a near-universal experience for Armenian families, while Vitamin Club became one of the defining comedy formats of Armenian commercial television. In recent years, the Media Ownership Monitor notes, the company has introduced a series of new programmes that are mainly entertainment in nature, confirming the shift in emphasis from its news-first Gyumri origins to a generalist national schedule in which entertainment carries prime time and news carries the channel's reputation for trust.

Digital Services and Web Presence

Shant TV developed an online presence early, offering video and photo galleries, audition calls, voting and registrations through its website, and at one stage an online TV forum. Its official website is shanttv.com. The company has also launched Shant Digital TV, a paid service that allows users to watch Armenian and international channels. That service marks a second business line alongside free-to-air broadcasting: Shant acting not only as a channel but as a distributor of a channel package, a model aimed particularly at viewers who watch on connected devices and at the diaspora audience the channel has courted since its Gyumri years, when its humour sketches were already being distributed among Armenians worldwide.

Audience Standing and Trust

Shant TV's standing is documented from several independent directions. In the ratings for July 2019 summarised by Media Landscapes, Shant was the second-rated channel in Armenia, behind Armenia TV and ahead of ATV, the Public Television of Armenia and Kentron TV. In audience trust research, including the Caucasus Barometer, Shant is routinely grouped with Armenia 1, Armenia TV and H2 among the stations respondents name. Directory descriptions summarise the position as consistently among Armenia's most-watched and most-trusted channels, and the evidence of the 2019 ratings supports the most-watched part of that description for that period.

The channel's place was confirmed in the nationwide licensing process concluded in December 2022, when the regulator granted nationwide broadcasting licences to four television outlets — Armenia TV, ATV, Shant TV and Kentron TV. In a process from which H2 and Yerkir Media were left out, Shant's inclusion in the group of four preserved its universal terrestrial coverage into the fully digital era.

Shant in the Armenian Television Landscape

Shant TV occupies a distinctive place in Armenian media history for three verifiable reasons. First, it is one of the very few national Armenian channels that began outside the capital: founded in Gyumri in 1994 as a regional news service for Shirak, it earned a national position after moving to Yerevan, reversing the usual pattern in which Yerevan stations expand outward. Second, it sustained that position across three decades — from six hours a day in 1995, through the energy crisis and the analogue era, into digital terrestrial, HD, satellite and paid online distribution. Third, its brand rests on Armenian-language original production — news, serials such as In the Army and comedy such as Vitamin Club — in a market where imported programming is common.

The public record on Shant is comparatively good by Armenian standards: its founding, relocation, ownership shares and governance rules are documented by independent monitoring, and its ratings position is recorded for at least the key 2019 benchmark. What remains less fully documented in open sources is detailed current audience share, which the Media Ownership Monitor lists as missing data, and day-to-day schedule detail, which changes season by season. This profile records the verified core and leaves those gaps open, as the record requires.