About Sehiyye TV

Sehiyye TV

Sehiyye TV, rendered in the Azerbaijani regulator's English-language materials as Sahiyya TV, is a specialist health television channel based in Baku, Azerbaijan, and operated by Sahiyya TV LLC. It broadcasts medical and healthcare programming as a platform broadcaster that does not perform satellite transmission — a specific licensing category under Azerbaijan's media law — which means its legal identity is defined less by a frequency or a satellite footprint than by the licence the Audiovisual Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan issued to its operating company on 30 November 2022. Specialist channels are easy to overlook in a television market dominated by general entertainment and news services, yet they perform a recognisable function: they give a single professional field — in this case medicine and healthcare — a dedicated television home, and they carry advertising from that field under rules that general channels also face but that bite with particular directness on a health channel. Sehiyye TV's documented public record is unusually legal in character. The two firm anchors of that record are its 2022 licensing decision and a 2024 enforcement case in which the channel's operator was fined a total of 16,000 manats over medical-facility advertisements. This profile builds the channel's story around those verified anchors, explains the regulatory system that produced them, and states openly where the published record runs out, rather than inventing a programme schedule, a founder or an audience figure that no source supports.

Identity, name and operator

The channel's operating company is Sahiyya TV LLC, and the Audiovisual Council refers to the service in its English announcements as the Sahiyya TV channel of Sahiyya TV LLC. The name derives from the Azerbaijani word for health, səhiyyə, which is why the channel also appears in Latin-script renderings as Sehiyye TV. That transliteration difference is worth recording in a directory, because researchers searching in English will encounter both spellings for the same Baku service, and because the country's Ministry of Health uses the same root word in its own name and web presence. What the sources do not provide is equally important to state. No verified founding biography of the company, no named founder or director, no staff count and no official website address for the channel were available in the batch record or in the English-language regulatory sources consulted for this profile. The channel is therefore described here by what can be proved — its operator, its city, its subject matter and its licence — instead of by corporate colour that cannot be checked.

A specialist health channel

Sehiyye TV's defining characteristic is its subject: medical and healthcare programming. A dedicated health channel in a capital city serves several audiences at once. For viewers, it offers a place where health topics can be treated at greater length than a segment in a general news bulletin allows. For medical professionals and institutions, it offers a television environment whose audience has already chosen health content. For clinics and other medical facilities, it offers advertising space adjacent to that content — which is precisely where the channel's documented regulatory trouble later arose. Beyond that general function, restraint is required. No verified programme titles, presenters, broadcast hours or schedule details for Sehiyye TV were found in the sources used here, and this profile does not supply them from imagination. The absence of a rich programme record in English-language sources does not mean the channel broadcasts little; it means its day-to-day output has not been documented in the kind of sources a directory can responsibly cite. Its classification as a health channel comes from its operator's licensing record and from the medical character of the advertisements whose monitoring brought it before the courts.

Licensing under the 2022 media law

Sehiyye TV's licence belongs to a new legal era in Azerbaijani broadcasting. The Law on Media, adopted on 30 December 2021 and in force from 9 February 2022, replaced the older mass media and television statutes and made audiovisual media activity subject to licensing under a revised framework. The former National Television and Radio Council was abolished and replaced by the Audiovisual Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which became the body that regulates the audiovisual field, issues licences, monitors programmes and can initiate sanctions. Under the new classification, a platform broadcaster that does not perform satellite transmission distributes its service through platforms — cable, IPTV, OTT and online environments — rather than from its own satellite uplink. Azerbaijani legal summaries of the 2022 changes list the state duty for a broadcaster that does not perform satellite broadcasting at 1,500 manats, while platform-broadcaster licensing of this non-competitive kind proceeds on individual application rather than by tender, because it does not consume scarce terrestrial frequencies. That is the category into which Sehiyye TV was licensed, and understanding it explains why the channel can be a genuine licensed television service while having no satellite presence to report.

The licence decision of 30 November 2022

The specific decision that brought Sehiyye TV into the licensed landscape is documented in the Audiovisual Council's country reporting to the European Platform of Regulatory Authorities. On 30 November 2022 the Council adopted a decision to issue platform broadcaster licences, not performing satellite transmission, to four applicants together: Apamark LLC for the APA TV channel, Sahiyya TV LLC for the Sahiyya TV channel, Agro Television and Radio LLC for the Agro TV channel, and ATV Plus LLC for the ATV+Vivace and ATV+Cinema channels. The same reporting describes the period as one in which the Council had almost completed renewing licences issued by the abolished National Television and Radio Council and was also issuing new licences under the new classification. The company Sehiyye TV kept in that decision is instructive: a news-oriented service, an agricultural service, entertainment channels from an established television group, and a health service were all regularised on the same day under the same category. Sixteen days earlier, on 16 November 2022, Baku TV and Beat TV had received platform broadcaster licences in the same way, and Tahsil TV followed on 20 December 2022. Sehiyye TV's licence was thus part of the first wave through which Azerbaijan's newer, platform-delivered channels were brought inside the 2022 law.

How the channel reaches viewers

Because Sehiyye TV is licensed as a platform broadcaster without satellite transmission, its route to viewers runs through platform operators rather than through a satellite dish pointed at its own transponder. The Audiovisual Council's published guidance explains that operators choose which channels they retransmit according to their preferences and commercial objectives, while nationwide terrestrial broadcasters must be carried in basic packages. A specialist platform channel therefore depends on carriage agreements and on being included in the packages through which households actually watch. This distribution model is common to the generation of Azerbaijani channels licensed in late 2022, and it shapes what can and cannot be said about reach. No verified audience measurement, subscriber figure or carriage list for Sehiyye TV is available in the sources consulted, and none is claimed here. What the licence category proves is the legal channel of distribution; it does not by itself prove how many households receive the service or how many people watch its health programming.

Regulation and monitoring

To understand Sehiyye TV's public record, it helps to understand the monitoring system above it. Under Article 46.1.1 of the Law on Media, as the Council itself explains, the Council regulates the audiovisual field and monitors compliance with regulatory legal acts, including by monitoring audiovisual programmes. That monitoring is carried out by the Council office's department for monitoring and analysing audiovisual programmes, through direct monitoring by employees who identify and register violations, and through verification of citizens' appeals. Where monitoring finds a violation, the broadcaster may face suspension of broadcasting under Article 41 of the Law on Media and/or an administrative sanction under the Code of Administrative Offences, applied through the courts. The Council's published material lists a scale of possible responses, from warnings and short suspensions to financial sanctions and, at the extreme, suspension or revocation of a licence, with Council decisions open to consideration by the courts. Sehiyye TV's 2024 case followed this documented pathway exactly: monitoring identified a problem, protocols were drawn up, a court decided the penalty, and an appeal court reviewed it. The case is therefore not only a story about one channel; it is a worked example of how Azerbaijani broadcast regulation operates on a small specialist licensee.

The 2024 advertising fine

The enforcement case is the most detailed episode in Sehiyye TV's documented history, and the Council's own announcement supplies its facts. During monitoring of the Sahiyya TV channel, the Council found violations of Article 4.3 of the Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Advertising. That provision states that goods whose production or sale is licensed or certified may be advertised only with the relevant supporting documents, and that the advertisement must indicate the licence and certificate number, the date of issue and the name of the issuing authority. In advertisements for medical facilities broadcast on the channel on 7 June 2024 at 20:00 and on 8 June 2024 at 08:00, those licence and certificate details were not indicated. On 8 June 2024 the Council drew up two protocols on administrative offences and sent them to the relevant court under Article 43.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences. On 27 June 2024 the Nasimi District Court reviewed the cases and fined Sahiyya TV LLC a total of 16,000 manats — 8,000 manats for each administrative offence. On 16 August 2024 the Baku Court of Appeal upheld the first-instance decisions, and they entered into legal force. One point in the batch record for this channel needs gentle correction in emphasis: the fine was imposed by the court on the basis of the Council's protocols, and upheld on appeal, rather than levied by the Council directly — a distinction the Council's own headline and text make clear.

Why the case matters for a health channel

The advertising rule at issue is not a technicality invented for television. Its logic is that a medical facility's licence is part of what a viewer needs in order to judge an advertisement for treatment: a clinic that is licensed can say so, with the number, date and issuing authority on screen, and a viewer can check. For a general channel, a missing licence line in one advertisement is a compliance failure. For a health channel, whose commercial environment is built around medical services, the same failure goes to the centre of the business model, because medical-facility advertising is not incidental to the schedule but one of its natural revenue sources. The Sehiyye TV case shows the regulator applying the advertising law to exactly the kind of advertisement a health channel exists to carry, and at the higher end of the financial range, with two separate broadcasts treated as two offences. It also shows the limits of what can be concluded: the Council's announcement identifies the missing details and the broadcasts' times, but it does not name the medical facilities advertised, and this profile does not guess at their identity.

Place among Azerbaijani specialist channels

Sehiyye TV belongs to a small family of subject-specific Azerbaijani services that took shape under the platform-broadcaster category, alongside channels devoted to agriculture, education and other single fields licensed in the same period. That family reflects a structural change in Azerbaijani television: once distribution no longer requires a terrestrial frequency or a satellite transponder, a narrow subject can sustain a channel of its own, provided a company is willing to license it and platforms are willing to carry it. Within that family, Sehiyye TV is the health specialist — a position no general channel duplicates, because general channels treat health as one topic among many. Its Baku base places it in the capital, where the country's principal medical institutions, private clinics and health advertisers are concentrated. That concentration is consistent with the channel's documented record: when the regulator monitored Azerbaijani television for advertising compliance in June 2024, the medical-facility advertisements that produced a court case were on this channel.

What remains undocumented

A candid profile must end by marking its own limits. For Sehiyye TV, the verified record establishes the operator, Sahiyya TV LLC; the city, Baku; the subject, medical and healthcare programming; the distribution class, platform broadcaster without satellite transmission; the licence date, 30 November 2022; and the 2024 fine of 16,000 manats, imposed by the Nasimi District Court and upheld by the Baku Court of Appeal on 16 August 2024. It does not establish a founding date earlier than the licence, a founder, a programme schedule, a website, an audience size or a current schedule beyond the licence itself. The batch record for this directory listed no official website for the channel, and no verified official site was identified in the sources consulted, so no website is stated here. Should the operator publish schedules, company information or audience data in future, the profile can be extended from those primary materials. Until then, Sehiyye TV stands in this directory as what the evidence supports: Baku's licensed specialist health channel, documented through the regulatory system that created its category, licensed it in November 2022 and held its medical advertising to the letter of the advertising law in 2024.