Private capital is welcome to invest, he added.
"We are considering prospects for other stockholders, commercial included, though the Defense Ministry will certainly hold the control block," the minister said to a news conference in Tomsk, Siberia.
The Defense Ministry has been generously allocating for several years now on channel equipment. It expects the Zvezda soon to extend its broadcasting geography.
Zvezda commercials will advertise Russian-based manufacturers alone, with the greatest attention to the military-industrial complex, said Mr. Ivanov.
"We want veterans and young people alike to watch the Zvezda-and we make it a point to orient the new channel on male audiences," he stressed.
The channel bases on the Defense Ministry's central television and radio broadcasting service, or CTRS, Alexander Lebedev, its manager, said to Novosti yesterday. The ministry obtained a TV broadcasting license for frequency 57 back in 1999, soon to lose it as it could not arrange casts. It regained the license late in February 2004.
Test casts will be limited to Moscow and its environs eventually to spread to other parts of Russia. Zvezda broadcasting geography is to start enlarging toward this year's end. It is to involve 51 regions, in the least. Otherwise, the new channel will not qualify for a federal status.
The Zvezda will start with reruns of Russian-made patriotically minded features and documentaries, later on to shift to its own productions, said Mr. Lebedev.
Before Zvezda preparations started, the Defense Minister forwarded a message to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov-a request to promote the budding channel, and help it to spread its casts throughout Russia. As the message pointed out,the CTRS was to hold a 51% block of Zvezda shares. The channel was to be entitled to federal allocations as a "socially important media outlet".
