NTV (Russia)

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NTV
Launched October 10, 1993
Owned by Gazprom Media
Picture format 576i
Country Russian Federation
Broadcast area Russian Federation, Eastern Europe, Middle East, the USA, Canada
Headquarters Moscow, Russian Federation
Website www.ntv.ru

NTV (НТВ in Cyrillic) is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most,[1] it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom, causing a major controversy.[2]

Contents

[edit] History

Vladimir Gusinsky's company was founded in 1993 and attracted the best journalists and news anchors of the time: Tatiana Mitkova, Leonid Parfyonov, Mikhail Osokin, Yevgeniy Kiselyov, Vladimir A. Kara-Murza (father of Vladimir V. Kara-Murza), Victor Shenderovich and others. The channel set high professional standards in Russian television, giving live coverage and sharp analysis of current events. Its political puppet show Kukly ("Puppets"), had become a signature of the time when the freedom of speech was virtually unlimited. NTV was reputed for its news operation and popular entertainment programmes. In the late 1990s it ran prime-time news show Segodnya ("Today") with Mitkova and Osokin daily at 7 p.m and 10 p.m and weekly news commentary programme Itogi ("Summing up") with Kiselyov on Sundays at 9 p.m., both top-rated.[3]

NTV was heavy on criticism of the Russian government, especially with respect to the Chechen Wars (even going as far as conducting interviews with Chechen rebel leaders)[citation needed]. However, it favourably commented President Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996.

By 1999 NTV had achieved an audience of 102 million, covering about 70% of Russia's territory, and was available in other former Soviet republics.[4]

During parliamentary elections in 1999 and presidential elections in 2000 NTV was critical of the Second Chechen War, Vladimir Putin and the political party Unity backed by him. In the puppet show Kukly in the beginning of February 2000, the puppet of Putin acted as Little Zaches in a story based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Little Zaches called Cinnabar", in which blindness causes villagers mistake an evil gnome for a beautiful youth.[5]

This provoked a fierce reaction of Putin's supporters. On February 8 the newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti published a letter signed by the Rector of St. Petersburg State University Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the Dean of its Law Department Nikolay Kropachyov and some of Putin's other presidential campaign assistants that urged to prosecute the authors of the show for what they considered a criminal offence.

[edit] The talk show with people of Ryazan and FSB members

On March 24, 2000, two days before the presidential elections, NTV Russia featured Ryazan events of the Fall 1999 in a talk show Independent Investigation. The talk with the residents of the Ryazan apartment building along with FSB members Alexander Zdanovich and General Sergeyev was filmed earlier on March 20, 2000. The FSB members refused to provide the name of the head of the training exercise, if there was any. On March 26 Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk.[6]

NTV general manager Igor Malashenko spoke at the JFK School of Government on the day of airing the show and said that Information Minister Mikhail Lesin warned him on several occasions. Malashenko's recollection of Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk NTV "crossed the line and that we were outlaws in their eyes".[7]

According to Alexander Goldfarb, Igor Malashenko told him years later that Valentin Yumashev brought a warning from the Kremlin one day before airing the show. Goldfarb wrote that the warning in no uncertain terms said that NTV "should consider themselves finished" if they would go ahead with the broadcast.[8]

[edit] Change of the management

On May 11, 2000, tax police, backed by officers from the general prosecutor's office and the FSB, stormed the Moscow headquarters of NTV and Media-Most and searched the premises for 12 hours. Critics considered this move politically motivated, as NTV voiced opposition to Putin since his presidential electoral campaign. Putin denied any involvement.

Viktor Shenderovich claimed that an unnamed top government official required NTV to exclude the puppet of Putin from Kukly.[9] Accordingly, in the following episode of the show, called "Ten Commandments", the puppet of Putin was replaced with a cloud covering the top of a mountain and a burning bush.

The program Itogi went on investigating corruption in Russian government and the autumn 1999 blasts in Russia.

On June 13, 2000, Gusinsky was detained as a suspect in the General Prosecutor Office's criminal investigation of fraud between his Media-Most holding, Russkoye Video - 11th Channel Ltd. and the federal enterprise Russkoye Video. At the time, Media-Most was involved in a dispute over the loan received from Gazprom. On the third day, however, he was released under the written undertaking not to leave the country.[10]

On July 15 the puppet of Putin acted in the Kukly show as Girolamo Savonarola.

On July 19 investigators of the office of Prosecutor General of Russia came to Gusinsky's home, distrained and arrested his property.

In a surprisingly informal deal, the charges against Gusinsky were lifted after he signed an agreement with Mikhail Lesin, Minister of Media, on July 20. Under the agreement, Gusinsky would discharge his debts by selling Media-Most to Gazprom, which had held a 30% share of NTV since 1996, for the price imposed by the latter, and was given a guarantee that he would not be prosecuted. After leaving the country, Gusinsky claimed he was pressured to sign the agreement by the prospect of the criminal investigation. Media-Most refused to comply with the agreement.

Tax authorities brought a suit against Media-Most aiming to wind it up.

On January 26, 2001, Gazprom announced that it had acquired a controlling stake of 46% in NTV. The voting rights of a 19% stake held by Media-Most was frozen by a court decision.[11]

Putin met with leading NTV journalists on January 29, but the meeting changed nothing. The parties reasserted their positions; Putin denied any involvement and said that he could not interfere with the prosecutors and courts.[12]

Around that time American media mogul Ted Turner appeared to be going to buy Gusinsky's share, but this has never happened.

On April 3 Gazprom Media headed by Alfred Kokh by violating the procedure conducted a shareholders' meeting which removed Kiselyov from the NTV Director General position.

On April 14, 2001 Gazprom took over NTV by force and brought in its own management team. Its director-general Yevgeniy Kiselyov was replaced by Boris Jordan. Many leading journalists, including Yevgeniy Kiselyov, Svetlana Sorokina, Viktor Shenderovich, Vladimir A. Kara-Murza, Dmitry Dibrov, left the company. Leonid Parfyonov and Tatyana Mitkova remained. Kiselyov's Itogi program was closed down, replaced by Parfyonov's Namedni.

Citizens concerned by the threat to the freedom of speech in Russia argued that the financial pressure was inspired by the Vladimir Putin's government, which was often subject to NTV's criticism. Some tens of thousands of Russians rallied to the call of dissident NTV journalists in order to support the old NTV staff in April 2001. Within the next couple of years, two independent TV channels which absorbed the former NTV journalists, TV-6 and TVS, were also shut down.[13]

In January 2003 Boris Jordan was ousted as director general and replaced by Nikolay Senkevich, son of TV-presenter Yuri Senkevich from Channel One.[14] A few days earlier he was also discharged from Media-Most director-general position, where he had replaced Alfred Kokh in October 2001. As insiders claimed, Jordan was sacked because NTV had carried a live translation of the culmination of the Moscow theater siege in October 2002 and had been too critical of the way authorities handled it.

Since then, entertaining talk-shows have become more prominent on NTV, rather than political programmes. However, unlike other leading TV channels in Russia, NTV went on reporting on-the-fly about some opposition activities and government failures, including the conflagrating fire of the Moscow Manege on the day of Russian presidential elections on March 14, 2004, and the assassination of the pro-Russian President of Chechnya Akhmad Kadyrov on Victory Day May 9, 2004.

On June 1, 2004, Leonid Parfyonov, one of the last leading journalists from the old NTV staff who remained, and who was still critical of the government, was ousted from the channel, and his weekly news commentary programme Namedni was taken off the air.[15][16] Its last announced episode never aired. Shortly before this, Parfyonov had been forbidden to present an interview with Malika Yandarbieva, widow of Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. Zelimkhan Yandarbiev had been assassinated in exile in Qatar earlier that year. Parfyonov had shared this decision with the public on May 31.[17]

On July 5, 2004, Senkevich was replaced by Vladimir Kulistikov (b. 1952) as director general of NTV.[18] Tamara Gavrilova, formerly a fellow student with Vladimir Putin at Leningrad State University, was appointed deputy director general.[19]

Soon the political programmes Freedom Of Speech hosted by Savik Shuster, Personal Contribution hosted by Alexander Gerasimov, and Red Arrow were closed down.

[edit] Late 2000s

As of 2006, NTV runs weekly news commentary programme Sunday Night in a talk-show format and political talk-show On The Stand, both hosted by Vladimir Solovyov, as well as weekly news commentary programme Real Politics hosted on Saturdays since 2005 by political analyst and key Kremlin adviser Gleb Pavlovsky.

[edit] Artistic design

The "NTV" logo as well as the iconic green sphere was designed by Simon Levin, the Russian designer, and became a symbol for the new graphic language of television design in Russia.

[edit] See also

v • d • e
Television in Russia
State-Run
Channel 1 • Russia TV • TV Center • NTV • Channel 5 • Sport TV • Kultura TV • Zvezda • Vesti • Russia Today1 • Rusiya Al-Yaum1
Private
RTVi1 •STS • TNT• TV3 • REN TV • Domashny • MTV Russia • Muz TV • 7TV • DTV Viasat RBC TV • Eurosport • Eurosport 2 • Music Box • Stolitsa • NTV Plus (NTV Plus Sport • NTV Plus Futbol • NTV Plus Sport Online • NTV Plus Tennis • NTV Plus Nash Futbol • NTV Plus Sport Klassika • Premiera • Kinoklub • Kinohit • Nashe Kino • Telenyanya • NTV Plus Sport Klassika • HD Sport • HD Kino • HD Life)
Defunct
TV6 • TVS
1Channels don't broadcast in Russia

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Viktor Shenderovich, "Tales From Hoffman" (sic) (48–57), Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 1, 2008, p. 50.
  2. ^ Alexei Bessudnov, "Media Map" (183–189), Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 1, 2008, p. 184.
  3. ^ G. Kertman, Star Wars (Political Commentators on Television), The Public Opinion Foundation, 1 March 2000.
  4. ^ NTV: Timeline of events, CNN, April 10, 2001.
  5. ^ Viktor Shenderovich, "Tales From Hoffman" (sic) (48–57), Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 1, 2008, p. 49.
  6. ^ (Russian) Александр Литвиненко (Alexander Litvinenko) and Юрий Фельштинский (Yuri Felshtinsky), ФСБ взрывает Россию. ФСБ против народа (FSB vzhrivaet Rossii, FSB protiv naroda, "FSB blows up Russia. FSB against the people"), Novaya Gazeta, August 27, 2001. Computer translation.
  7. ^ Miriam Lanskoy, Caucasus Ka-Boom, 8 November 2000, Johnson's Russia List, Issue 4630
  8. ^ Alexander Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB (2007), The Free Press, ISBN 1416551654, p. 198.
  9. ^ (Russian) Виктор Шендерович (Viktor Shenderovich), Здесь Было НТВ, ТВ-6, ТВС: Обстоятельства непреодолимой сил (Zdes' bilo NTV, TV-6, TVS: Obstoyatel'ctva nepreodolimoi sil, "Here was NTV, TV-6, TVS: Force Majeure"), 2003, on a site of interviews and articles mainly by TV host Svetlana Sorokina. Computer translation.
  10. ^ (Russian) Елена Курасова (Elena Kurasova), Телекнязь Кара-Мурза (Telekiyaz' Kara-Murza, "Tele-prince Kara-Murza"), Stringer.ru, 1 March 2003
  11. ^ Gazprom Takes Control of NTV, Kagan World Media, Ltd. January 26, 2001. Archived on the Internet Archive March 28, 2006.
  12. ^ Viktor Shenderovich, "Tales From Hoffman" (sic) (48–57), Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 1, 2008, p. 53.
  13. ^ Viktor Shenderovich, "Tales From Hoffman" (sic) (48–57), Index on Censorship, Volume 37, Number 1, 2008, p. 55. Discusses TV-6.
  14. ^ Tom Birchenough, Senkevich bounds to top NTV slot, Variety, January 23, 2003.
  15. ^ Nick Paton Walsh, Television station sacks Kremlin's last critic, The Guardian (UK), 3 June 2004.
  16. ^ Leonid Parfenov Sacked from NTV, Kommersant (Russia), 2 June 2004.
  17. ^ Maria Luisa Tirmaste, "It Was a Request We Couldn't Refuse", Kommersant (Russia), May 31, 2004
  18. ^ Simon Saradzhyan, Kulistikov Appointed New Chief of NTV, The Moscow Times, 6 July 2004.
  19. ^ (Russian) Виктор Шендерович (Viktor Shenderovich), Венеролог Басаев, однокурсница президента, а также — почему Зюганов пожаловался Путину на него самого, (Venerolog Basayev, Odnokurisnitsa prezidenta, a takzhe — pochemu Zuganov pochalovalsya Putinu na nego samogo, "Venerolog Basayev, president of Odnokurisnitsa and — why Zuganov complained to Putin himself") Novaya Gazeta, 19 July 2004

[edit] External links