About Yerkir Media

Yerkir Media

Yerkir Media is a television company based in Yerevan, Armenia, broadcasting news and current affairs in Armenian. It was established in 2003 by Husaber CJSC, a company founded by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — the Dashnaktsutyun party — and began broadcasting in December 2004, becoming the first Armenian television station affiliated with a political party. Its terrestrial broadcasting was interrupted after it failed to win a licence in the competitions of 2021-2022, but it returned to the public multiplex on 30 June 2023, and it was still operating in December 2025, when it publicly offered airtime to the closing Shoghakat TV. This profile corrects the outdated summary in its seed record, which described the station as having ceased terrestrial broadcasting around 2020 and continued only online: the documented record shows an interruption, a court-driven absence and a return, not a closure.

Founding by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation

Yerkir Media was established in 2003 by Khusaber CJSC — Husaber in another transliteration — which was founded by the ARF Dashnaktsutyun party, and it began broadcasting in December 2004. Directory and reference sources agree on the essential point: it was the first Armenian television station affiliated with a political party. The Yerkir name itself carried the party's history. Yerkir, meaning Country, was the official newspaper of the Supreme Body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, first published on 27 August 1991; at its 1993-94 peak it was the largest-circulation daily in Armenia. The paper was banned on 28 December 1994 when President Levon Ter-Petrosyan suspended the ARF itself, and permission to relaunch it was given only in March 1998, after the ban on the party was lifted in February 1998. The television company created in 2003-2004 extended that party media tradition — print first, then broadcasting — into the television era.

Structure Under Armenian Media Law

Armenian law prohibits political parties from owning television stations directly, and Yerkir Media's structure reflected that: the station was held through Husaber CJSC rather than by the party itself. Commentators on Armenian media noted that some of Yerkir's managers were members of the ARF, that the party did not formally finance the station, and that the station consistently defended the ARF's stance — for example following the party's position in favour of the constitutional amendments in the December 2015 referendum campaign. Freedom House reporting from the station's first years described it in the terms used in this directory's seed: a station that broadcast news and current affairs promoting Dashnaktsutyun positions and often criticising government policy.

Editorial Character and Early Reputation

Yerkir Media built its reputation as a news and analysis station rather than an entertainment channel. An Institute for War and Peace Reporting monitoring study from the late 2000s found that Yerkir Media, which broadcast mostly in the capital and belonged to the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party — then a member of the ruling coalition — provided relatively independent news coverage compared with other stations. Its director, Gegham Manukian, told IWPR that during all that time the company had not received a single hint, threat or recommendation as to what it should air and what it should not. Ter-Petrosyan, the former president who had banned the Dashnaktsutyun when in office, nevertheless received extensive coverage from the channel.

Later commentary placed Yerkir among the four Armenian stations that de facto belonged to or actively defended the interests of a political party, describing it as broadcast nationwide with a fairly strong news and analysis team. In election-period monitoring in 2021, Yerkir Media was still counted among the pan-national terrestrial television channels monitored alongside the public First Channel and Shant TV. That is the station's documented position before the licensing crisis: a party-affiliated but professionally regarded news channel with nationwide terrestrial reach.

Loss of the Terrestrial Licence, 2021-2023

Yerkir Media's terrestrial history in the digital era is a sequence of tenders, annulments and returns that must be told carefully, because summaries often compress it into a closure that never finally happened. In January 2021 the Television and Radio Commission finalised the national tender for slots in the public multiplex; the winners included Husaber CJSC — Yerkir Media — alongside Armenia TV, Shant, A-TV and Multi Media-Kentron. H2, which lost in that competition, appealed to court, and the court annulled the tender results. The commission then set the number of slots at four instead of five, because one slot was frozen while H2's separate claim to be recognised as winner was litigated. In the new tender, four of six participating companies were granted licences; Yerkir Media and H2 did not receive a broadcasting licence. Consequently, from 21 January 2022 — the date given in Media.am's account of the return — Yerkir Media ceased broadcasting in the multiplex.

The 2023 Legislative Fix and Return to Air

In March 2023 the National Assembly amended the Law on Audiovisual Media to make it possible to resolve the situation of the empty, court-disputed fifth slot. Five months after the termination of its terrestrial broadcasting in the final sequence, Yerkir Media was back on the air: from midnight on 30 June 2023 its programmes could again be followed in the public multiplex on the same slot it had held, channel 7. A separate account in IREX's Vibrant Information Barometer records the December 2022 licensing round from the regulator's side: nationwide licences were granted to Armenia TV, ATV, Shant TV and Kentron TV, leaving out H2 and Yerkir Media, and the head of the commission dismissed allegations that Yerkir Media was excluded because of its oppositional stance, stating the decision was based solely on scoring. Both the exclusion and the 2023 return are documented; the return followed the legislative amendment that unfroze the disputed slot.

Continuing Operation and the Shoghakat Offer

The clearest recent evidence of Yerkir Media's continuing operation is dated 29 December 2025, when the ARKA news agency reported that the Yerkir Media television company had offered airtime to the church-based Shoghakat TV, which was being shut down by the authorities. Yerkir Media stated that, highly appreciating the work of Shoghakat TV and considering the circumstances surrounding its suspension, it was ready to provide airtime to its colleagues at Shoghakat starting 1 January — the date on which Shoghakat closed. The same ARKA report restates the founding facts used in this profile: Yerkir Media was established in 2003 by Khusaber CJSC, founded by the ARF Dashnaktsutyun party, and began broadcasting in December 2004.

Why the Record Shows an Active Broadcaster

A working television company offering its airtime to another broadcaster's displaced programming is not a closed or online-only outlet. Read together with the June 2023 return to the multiplex, the December 2025 statement establishes that Yerkir Media remained an operating broadcaster at the end of 2025, and this profile is therefore written in the present tense.

Programming and Audience

Yerkir Media broadcasts news and current affairs in Armenian, promoting the positions of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and frequently scrutinising government policy from that party's standpoint. Its news and analysis team has been its recognised strength in independent monitoring, and its political programmes have tracked the ARF line on major national questions, as documented for the 2015 referendum. It serves a dual audience: party supporters and the wider public for whom, in periods when most channels avoided criticism of the government, a party channel willing to criticise was itself a source of alternative coverage — the quality the IWPR monitoring identified in the late 2000s.

No reliable published ratings series or audience share for Yerkir Media was found in the sources used for this profile, and none is claimed here. Its documented footprint is institutional rather than statistical: continuous presence in election monitoring samples, in the multiplex licensing record and in national media reporting from 2004 to 2025.

Seed Correction and Place in Armenian Media

This profile flags a material correction to its seed record. The seed stated that Yerkir Media ceased terrestrial broadcasting around 2020 and continued online as Yerkir.am, and it marked the station as closed in 2020. Research for this profile found no support for a 2020 closure. The documented sequence is: nationwide terrestrial broadcasting until the licensing disputes of 2021-2022; cessation from 21 January 2022 after failing to win a licence in the re-run tender; a legislative amendment in March 2023; return to the public multiplex on 30 June 2023 on channel 7; and normal operation evidenced in December 2025. The seed is also imprecise on the founding: the station was not simply launched in 2004 by the party, but established in 2003 by Husaber CJSC, a company founded by the ARF, with broadcasting beginning in December 2004. The seed's remaining claims — first party-affiliated station, ARF affiliation, news and current affairs in Armenian, headquarters in Yerevan — are confirmed.

Yerkir Media's place in Armenian media is that of the country's original party television station and its most durable one. Created a decade after the ARF's own newspaper had been banned and restored, it demonstrated that a party-affiliated channel could sustain a professional news operation, survive the loss of its terrestrial licence through a court-frozen licensing system, and return to the multiplex when the law changed. In a market where most channels are tied to business owners rather than to parties, Yerkir Media remains the clearest example of the party-media model — and, on the evidence of 2025, an active one.