On October 1, 2026, on the grounds of violating the “Law on Broadcasting,” the Communications Commission fined the TV channel “Formula” for the third time, this time with a 10,000 GEL penalty.
According to the Communications Commission’s statement, the issue concerns “violations” identified as a result of monitoring conducted from September 14 to 16. The agency considers the channel’s use of evaluative terms in live broadcasts and news reports to be a breach of content regulation. In its official statement, the Communications Commission did not specify which exact terms were in question this time. However, in the previous two instances, the channel was fined for using terms such as: “the ‘Dream’ government,” “the ‘Georgian Dream’ president,” “the ‘Dream’ Prosecutor’s Office,” “the ‘Dream’ Prime Minister,” “the ‘Dream’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” “repressive laws,” and “repressions of the ‘Dream’ regime.”
Over the past year, since the Communications Commission began monitoring the content of broadcasters, inquiries against “Formula” have been launched four times. In the first instance, the channel was issued a written warning; in the second instance, it was fined 2,500 GEL; and the third proceeding concluded with a 5,000 GEL fine. Since this was the fourth case overall, according to the Law of Georgia “On Broadcasting,” the channel had to be subjected to a fine not exceeding 3% of its annual revenue, but no less than 10,000 GEL. Consequently, the third fine was set at 10,000 GEL.
