TV Gagauzia and GRT FM are part of the Public Institution Gagauziya Radio Televizionu (GRT) Public Company.

In 2000, with financial and technical support from the International Organization TIKA in Moldova, a radio association was established, and later, radio and television merged into a single media structure - the State Company "Teleradio Gagauzia". The company existed in this status for 7 years and was then transformed into a public institution in accordance with the "Radio and Television Law" adopted in 2007 by the People's Assembly of Gagauzia. In a monitoring report on the implementation process of the Audiovisual Code, ten media and human rights associations maintained that the process of liquidating the State Company "Teleradio-Gagauzia" and creating the Regional Public Broadcasting Institution "Teleradio-Gagauzia" Company took place in conditions of non-transparency, lack of cooperation with civil society, with derogations from the provisions of the Audiovisual Code, with numerous abuses and violations. Among the most serious, in the experts' opinion, is the fact that Teleradio Gagauzia was liquidated and then transformed into a public broadcaster, and the fact that the members of the Company's Observers Council were appointed in a non-transparent way and with violations of legislation.

Local experts also emphasized that the Law adopted in 2007 was parallel to the Audiovisual Code of Chisinau and created a risk that, in the absence of synergies in the reform of local and national legislation in the audiovisual field, contradictions could arise between the two. At the same time, the fact that the People's Assembly of Gagauzia allocated itself powers to form the GRT Observers Council had a negative impact on the Company's activity. The leadership of the People's Assembly intervened several times in the company's management, repeatedly dissolving the Observers Council, which caused a management crisis at GRT, starting in 2008.

In March 2016, the People's Assembly of Gagauzia adopted a new Law "On Television and Broadcasting", under which the public company "Gagauziya Radio Televizionu" operates today as the public broadcaster in the Autonomous Territorial Unit Gagauz Yeri. Several non-governmental organizations raised alarms at the time, noting that the draft law would violate national legislation and would generate limitations on freedom of expression in the region. Similarly, the draft law would contain many contradictions and would rebuild the Public Company on principles absolutely contrary to the public spirit of a broadcaster.

The experts from the Public Association Piligrim-Demo noted in 2016 that through the adoption of the local Audiovisual Law, practically all management competencies of the company were transferred to the GRT Observers Council, thus violating the balance of power between management and the Company's Observers Council, and the People's Assembly of Gagauzia obtained the right to remove Council members without any explanation, thus undermining the independence of the GRT Company.

According to this law, the governing body of the Company is the Observers Council, which is superior in relation to GRT. The Observers Council is an independent autonomous body, representing Gagauzia's society, which exercises supervision and control over the Company's activities. The Council has nine members, appointed by the People's Assembly of Gagauzia, for a single four-year term. These are representatives of civil society from Gagauzia, specialized in different fields of activity.

The Council approves the GRT Company statute, its operating and organizational regulations, develops strategies aimed at preserving the ethnic, historical-cultural, and linguistic identity of the Gagauz people, publishes Company evaluation reports, and at the proposal of the Company's executive director, appoints and dismisses their deputies - the editor-in-chief of television and the editor-in-chief of radio. The Council also organizes the competition for the position of general director of the company.

The Company is led by an executive director, appointed by the Observers Council following a competition. The executive director is appointed for a 4-year term. The operation of the Gagauz public media service provider is ensured by the executive director and their deputies. They develop the draft budget, and the Observers Council approves it, after which the document is sent for examination to the Executive Committee of Gagauzia, and subsequently to the People's Assembly of Gagauzia for adoption.

Eight years after adoption, experts found that the Law adopted in March 2016 does not have an integral and logically coherent structure. Among other things, a study from June 2024 mentioned that the law does not regulate the concept of propaganda and disinformation. One of the biggest deficiencies of this law, however, is the regulation of GRT activities: the supervisory council's attributions obviously limit the editorial independence of the public broadcaster. These inconsistencies also create premises for significant influence from political factors on public media institutions. One of the most suggestive examples is the replacement, in March 2022, of GRT leadership with persons close to politicians in power, as Vasile Dermenji became the executive director of GRT, about whom the press wrote that he is a lawyer in an organization associated with fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor. The new leadership promoted pro-Russian narratives and discredited Moldova's European integration. After an audit of the financial flows of Gagauz public television and radio, the Council for Promoting Investment Projects of National Importance specified that it identified an unjustified transaction of hundreds of thousands of lei from the GRT director. Previously, several deputies of the People's Assembly of Gagauzia condemned the actions of the head of the GRT Observers Council, Mihail Vlah, for supporting the former Shor party. He was accused of serving party interests and introducing censorship on television. The former GRT director, Ecaterina Jekova, also spoke about the new GRT leadership's subservience to the new power installed in Gagauzia and GRT's promotion of Moscow's propaganda narratives.

The 2016 law was supplemented in 2024 with an amendment, according to which a new licensing procedure was created for TV and radio stations in the region, which consists of obtaining, for a fee, from the General Directorate of Construction and Infrastructure of UTAG, an authorization called Izin. This legislative innovation implies evading the mechanism of obtaining a broadcasting license from the Audiovisual Council (CA) – the only authority that can decide on granting a media service provider, under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Moldova, the right to broadcast a certain linear audiovisual media service.

The amendments approved by UTAG's legislative body also contain a series of unwanted and legally inconsistent interventions on the operating mechanisms of the public audiovisual media service provider GRT. Among these is the creation of an annual employee evaluation procedure by a "special commission," which would include a member from the local legislative body and which presents a major potential for undermining the independence of the public provider, media NGOs complained.

In recent years, GRT has been sanctioned several times by the Audiovisual Council, especially for spreading disinformation. At the same time, media NGOs have constantly expressed concern over the past year about the deontological derailments within the GRT company, condemning elements of censorship.