About Kentron TV

Kentron TV

Kentron TV is a private television channel based in Yerevan, Armenia, broadcasting in Armenian with a multi-genre schedule of news, public and political programming, entertainment, socio-economic, music, cultural, health and sports programmes, feature films, documentaries and cartoons. It was set up in early 2002 by a government-linked entertainment company and was controversially awarded the broadcasting frequency previously used by A1+, then Armenia's main independent channel. Its flagship news programme is Epikentron, also rendered in English as Epicenter. Over two decades the channel passed through several owners — including businessman and lawmaker Gurgen Arsenyan and lawmaker Murad Guloyan — before becoming associated with Gagik Tsarukyan's Multi Group concern and the Prosperous Armenia party. This profile records that verified history, including the controversies that are inseparable from it, and notes where the record rests on reporting rather than on registry documents.

Creation in 2002 and the A1+ Frequency

Kentron, whose name means Centre, was set up in early 2002. Channel listings record that Kentron TV was founded by Multimedia Center Kentron CJSC, established in 2002, and the operating company appears in later regulatory documents in the form Multi Media-Kentron TV CJSC. Reporting by RFE/RL at the time describes the founder as a government-linked entertainment company — the Sharm entertainment and advertising company in accounts of the licensing decision — which had no reporting staff of its own when it entered the licensing process.

The circumstances of Kentron's creation made it nationally controversial from birth. In April 2002 A1+, the republic's leading oppositional channel and the sole major channel that often aired reports critical of President Robert Kocharian, lost its licence in a disputed tender administered by the presidentially appointed National Commission on Television and Radio. The frequency was awarded to the newly created company that became Kentron. The closure of A1+ was condemned by domestic and international media groups and was widely believed to be politically motivated; the Council of Europe repeatedly called for the de facto ban on A1+ to be lifted. Kentron itself, like other major private networks of the period, was supportive of Kocharian and critical of his political opponents in its early years. Any honest profile of the channel must begin there: Kentron exists because a licensing decision removed Armenia's best-known independent broadcaster from the air.

Ownership Changes: Arsenyan, Guloyan and the Abrahamyan Appointment

Kentron's first prominent owner was Gurgen Arsenyan, a businessman who also led a small pro-presidential party represented in parliament; accounts of the period describe him as owning the channel for about a year before its next sale. In April 2004 Arsenyan sold the channel, and the buyer was Murad Guloyan — rendered Goloyan in some reports — a businessman and lawmaker representing Prime Minister Andranik Markarian's Republican Party. RFE/RL reported the sale and the reasoning offered for what followed.

What followed was one of the most discussed appointments in Armenian media. Aram Abrahamian — also transliterated Abrahamyan — editor of the Aravot daily, a newspaper sympathetic to the opposition, and a co-founder of A1+ who had hosted its popular talk show Post Script until A1+ lost its licence, agreed to become Kentron's director general. Abrahamian told RFE/RL that he accepted because he was given a blank check to ensure free, unrestricted and impartial coverage, and Guloyan was presented as having no political ambitions for the channel and treating it as a business. Abrahamian himself acknowledged the irony of inheriting, as he put it, a channel whose inception had helped kick A1+ off the airwaves two years earlier. Reporting from the period notes that Kentron's news coverage became more objective and balanced in the months around the change, and that the difference from other television stations was particularly visible during opposition demonstrations in Yerevan in April 2004. The renamed company was to air under Abrahamian from 10 May 2004.

The Tsarukyan and Multi Group Era

In its later ownership phase Kentron became part of the media interests associated with Gagik Tsarukyan, founder of the Multi Group concern and leader of the Prosperous Armenia party, and this directory's seed record describes it in those terms as part of Multi Group and the media arm associated with Prosperous Armenia. The supporting reporting is extensive but describes influence exercised through connected persons rather than a simple registered holding. A study of Armenian media ownership records Kentron TV as formally owned by Sedrak Arustamyan, while reporting that Tsarukyan founded and reportedly still controls the outlet through Arustamyan. Election observation reporting in 2018 likewise described Kentron as owned by Tsarukyan and perceived it as an active campaigning platform for his candidate. An Armenian commentary on the 2013 Yerevan elections stated that the channel belonging to Tsarukyan, Kentron, gave half of its airtime to promotion of Prosperous Armenia.

Reported Control and Editorial Coordination

Other documented details fill out the picture. The Media Ownership Monitor's history records, from leaked diplomatic cables and local reports, that Petros Ghazaryan of Kentron TV — the channel then under Tsarukyan's influence — told United States diplomats that he was required to clear programme guests with presidential staff, an account the Monitor presents as part of a broader pattern of coordination between major television companies and the presidency in that era. Regional channel managers were also reported, in a climate-of-self-censorship investigation, to have been encouraged by the chairman of the national television and radio commission to rebroadcast Kentron TV programmes in the regions, with Kentron's backers ready to pay for the distribution. This profile records these as reported accounts from identifiable sources, which is the strongest form in which Kentron's informal control structure is documented; the channel's own public materials do not describe its ownership in those terms.

Programming and Flagship Shows

Kentron's schedule is multi-genre. Published channel descriptions list news, public-political, entertainment, socio-economic, music, cultural, health and sports programmes, together with feature films, documentaries and cartoons. The flagship news programme is Epikentron — Epicenter — with Zaven Harutyunyan recorded in channel listings as a co-author and host of the news programme. Kentron's best-known format beyond the news has been its daily evening political interview, noted by commentators as particularly well known across Armenia. Petros Ghazaryan, associated with the channel's political programming in the period documented by the Media Ownership Monitor, became one of the recognisable faces of Armenian political television through that interview tradition — he later appears in the public record as head producer of political programmes at the public First Channel.

Headquarters, Website and Language

The channel's published contact details place it at 2 Alikhanyan Brothers Street in the Ajapnyak administrative district of Yerevan, postcode 0036. Its official website is kentrontv.am. It broadcasts in Armenian, and its programming mix — a strong political interview and news core inside a general entertainment schedule — matches the dual role it has played as both a commercial channel and a political platform for its owners' party.

Licensing and Place in the Digital Multiplex

Kentron survived every licensing upheaval that removed other channels from the air. It held a place among the metropolitan channels of the state digital multiplex formed after Armenia's digital transition, which incorporated 18 metropolitan channels and nine regional channels. More decisively, in the nationwide licensing process concluded on 2 December 2022 the regulator granted nationwide broadcasting licences to four television outlets — Armenia TV, ATV, Shant TV and Kentron TV — leaving out H2 and Yerkir Media. The head of the regulator dismissed allegations that the exclusions were political and said decisions rested on scoring; whatever the merits of that dispute, the verifiable outcome is that Kentron emerged from the process as one of only four channels with a nationwide terrestrial licence, alongside the country's three largest entertainment channels.

Kentron is also recorded among the board members of the Industrial Committee established under the 2024 reform of television audience measurement, in the group of five channels paying the higher monthly membership fee, alongside H1, Armenia TV, Shant TV and Fast Sport. That position reflects its continuing status as one of the core multiplex broadcasters around which the industry organises its measurement system.

Audience Standing

Kentron's audience position is documented for the key benchmark of July 2019, when Media Landscapes summarised the ratings of Armenia's leading channels as Armenia TV first, Shant TV second, ATV third, the Public Television of Armenia fourth and Kentron TV fifth. A media ownership study likewise describes Kentron as the fourth most-watched television outlet in its survey period, owned on paper by Sedrak Arustamyan. In the Caucasus Barometer and similar trust research, Kentron appears among the stations respondents name for political news. Taken together, the evidence places Kentron consistently in the second tier of Armenian television by audience — below the big three entertainment channels, but firmly among the handful of national channels that shape political coverage.

Assessment and Limits of the Record

Kentron TV's history condenses the central tensions of post-Soviet Armenian television into a single channel: a licence created by the removal of an independent competitor; a celebrated attempt in 2004 to run the channel impartially under an opposition newspaper editor; and a long later period in which ownership and editorial direction were bound up with one of the country's richest businessmen and his political party. Each of those phases is documented by named contemporary sources — RFE/RL, election observers, media ownership researchers and the channel's own listings — and this profile has kept the phases distinct rather than blending them into a single story.

What the open record does not provide is a complete registry-based ownership chain for every year of the channel's life, or current detailed audience shares. Where this profile names owners, it names them for the periods the sources support: the founding entertainment company in 2002, Gurgen Arsenyan, Murad Guloyan from 2004, and the Tsarukyan association, with Sedrak Arustamyan as the formally recorded owner in recent ownership research. Readers should treat the later phase in particular as reported control rather than as a published share register, because that is how the evidence stands.