The impact of digitalization on the destruction of the regional television institute

The article attempts to understand the first consequences of universal digitalization of television broadcasting and its impact on the destruction of the regional television institute. The study focuses on the regional segment of the media market, since, according to the federal target program «Development of broadcasting in the Russian Federation for 2009-2015» and the presidential Decree «On mandatory nationwide public TV channels and radio channels», only one local TV station gets the right to broadcast in the second multiplex on the 21st button. In May-June 2017, the author made a series of semi-structured interviews «Reverse side of TV digitalization». They show that TV digitalization will lead to the transformation of the digital television signal into a scarce commodity, which is available to a limited number of actors, to the redistribution of forces in the entire media market. At the same time, because of the broadcasting in multiplexes of exclusively pro-governmental TV companies (news = propaganda), it is quite possible, that the current picture can aggravate the problem of distrust to television. It can provoke further migration of the audience to the side of relatively free new media and strengthening positions of representatives of civil journalism - bloggers and regular users of social networks. Under these conditions, the final destruction of the regional television institution will take place.