In 2023, not a single Russian song was broadcast on national television and radio companies - probably for the first time since independence. This was announced during the presentation of the 2023 report on Thursday by the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin, UNN reports.
As for the media, we studied the activities of 14 television and radio organizations that broadcast nationally. I would like to emphasize that, probably for the first time since independence, not a single Russian song was recorded in the broadcasts of our TV and radio organizations
Details
According to the published report of the Language Ombudsman for 2023, broadcasters broadcast music mostly in the state language and official EU languages. "Not a single case of broadcasting a Russian-language song has been recorded. Among the 833,473 songs broadcast by radio organizations, 5,599 were performed in Ukrainian, 2,721 in the official languages of the European Union, 11 were performed in several languages, and 3 were in Georgian. Thus, out of the total number of songs that were aired during the two days, 67.2% were performed exclusively in Ukrainian," the report says.
It is noted that 5 broadcasters broadcast songs exclusively in Ukrainian; 5 broadcast more than 50% of their airtime in Ukrainian; 4 broadcast mostly music content in EU languages, and the share of Ukrainian-language songs in their airtime ranged from 26.5% to 45.5%.
At the same time, it is indicated that there are some songs that were previously performed in Russian. However, after the full-scale invasion, their texts were translated and they were broadcast exclusively in Ukrainian (MONATIK "Every time", Lyapis Trubetskoy "Warriors of Light", Lilu45 "Eight", Viktor Pavlik, Igor Balan "Shining of the Green City", Max Barskih "Fogs", "Bereg", etc.) The number of songs performed simultaneously in two languages (Ukrainian and Polish, Ukrainian and English) has also increased, "which may indicate the reorientation of the domestic music industry to the European market" (Maeve - "Never again", KALUSH Orchestra - "Changes", "In The Shadows Of Ukraine", Jerry Heil with PRZYŁU "BRACIA", Watsebha "Without further ado", TVORCHI "Heart of Steel", OCHI V OCHI "Deep of Ocean").
Addendum
According to the Office of the Language Ombudsman, the previous review showed that the share of songs performed in the state language was 62%. That is, we have an increase of 5%. The number of broadcasters broadcasting exclusively Ukrainian-language songs has also increased from 2 to 5.