Armenia’s 2013 presidential elections are remembered by many Armenians as among the most dramatic in the country’s history. A presidential candidate barely survived an assassination attempt and the re-election of former president Serzh Sargsyan led to a wave of protests, with accusations of electoral fraud. Gemafin Gasparyan remembers these elections as a wake-up call.
“It was a campaign of lies. It was the moment I realised that things had to change, and that Armenia could not continue on this path. We had to do something to develop a culture of rational political dialogue,” he says.
Together with co-founder, Christine Armenakyan, a fellow protestor, Gemafin founded the Scientific and Cultural Foundation in 2013, which today includes the television station Boon TV. Initially launched as a cable TV channel, in 2022, with EED’s support, Boon TV obtained a public broadcasting license. Now the channel is available in every Armenian home.
This has been a game-changer for the TV station, and the past two years have been a time of huge growth.
“We’re grown fast. We’re now the fourth largest channel focused on educational and cultural content. We had just seven people in our team three years ago, now we have a team of 55,” says Gemafin.
In the period following the latest Nagorno-Karabakh war, Gemafin believes that Boon TV’s role has become every more relevant as the political situation has become more difficult and media freedom has regressed in with government oversight over media increasing. “This is not helpful for our democratic future and it harms the media landscape,” he says.
He relates that ‘Boon’ in Armenian has two meanings, both ‘hut and home’ and ‘essence’, both key to the TV channel’s objective to contribute towards the development of society.
To date, Boon TV has produced thousands of programmes, including many documentaries and educational video series, particularly important during the Covid-19 lockdown period. Recent documentaries produced have focused on themes such as volunteering, the work of civil society organisations, the lives of those in marginalised communities in the country, on lost professions such as metro workers and newspaper printers, and on important Armenian cultural figures.
Each day, there is also two hours of children’s programming presented by a popular duo of puppets, Hodor and Godot with a focus on civic education.
The media also broadcasts a radio-station ‘Audioboon’ for an hour each day, that reaches up to 20,000 people, including taxi drivers, who tune into its content.
“Everything we do is fact-based, and research and knowledge led. We work with activists, scientists and artists to research each topic that we cover. We have built a community of experts,” Gemafin says.
Today, Gemafin has clear objectives for the next period.
“We have increased our audience significantly over the past two years and today we compete with TV channels that have been broadcasting for over 10 years. We know we need to do better to remain competitive. We broadcast 24/7 and we have to constantly produce new content. We need to improve our sets and the quality of our visual content. We’ve already worked on that. We need to increase our brand awareness and we need to take the time to stabilise and sustain our growth as a company,” he says.
He explains that Boon TV is currently running outdoor and social media campaigns. It will also launch a donation platform for the development of its children’s projects for Armenians at home and for the diaspora.
The focus of Boon TV’s work has stayed strong with the move to public broadcasting. “We work with marginalised groups and themes. We give people a voice, and a space to speak about new narratives and freedoms,” he says.
He accepts that this is not always an easy job. It is difficult for a TV channel with a social conscious to become financially sustainable as it is not easy to attract advertising from businesses, but he believes as its audience grows and its brand becomes stronger this will get easier.
Boon has already had a big impact. “Our audience grew by 20 percent between last autumn and spring alone,” he says. “As a cultural and educational project, we are increasing people’s knowledge and giving them the tools to understand our society. We produce documentaries on marginalised themes that help people to become more tolerant. We have become platform for ideas and for critical thinkers. Societal narratives are generally more progressive than a few years ago,”
“With Boon TV, we are helping to create a community of young people, opinion leaders and decision makers who together are helping to build a society that is curious about science and the arts, that can engages with it, and that understands public policies,” he says.
This article reflects the views of the grantees featured and does not necessarily represent the official opinion of the EED.
