Channels One & Five: A Love Story

Channel Five snuggles a little closer to Channel One.

In a Novaya Gazeta article published January 12, 2011, Liliia Shevtsova argued that Russian authorities rely on three columns of support to maintain their existence: nationalism, internationalism, and systemic liberalism. Her diagnosis is that nationalism is coming into its own and gaining spontaneity, not to mention coming into friction with international cooperation efforts (like the US-Russian Reset and improved Russia-NATO relations). Systemic liberalism is “staggering” and growing tired, Shevtsova says. This, she explains, is very dangerous because the facade of an empowered liberal movement is necessary for Russia’s elite to enjoy an integrated life with the West:

“Only imitated liberalism can provide the upper class [klass rant'e] with the chance to integrate into Western society.”

Last week, that imitation got a little weaker when Channel 5 canceled three talk shows that were all hosted by fairly high-profile liberal journalists: Svetlana Sorokina’s “Programma Peredach,” Nikolai Svanidze’s “Sud Vremeni,” and Dmitri Bykov’s “Kartina Maslom.” Each of these shows lasted roughly a year, the beginning and end of which were both marked by management changes at Channel 5. While the three fired hosts did not resign, they apparently welcomed cancelation with a certain resignation.

Svetlana Sorokina

“I remember how proudly the channel’s leadership announced the slogan then [at the beginning of 2010]: ‘television for the intelligent.’ But intelligent people don’t watch much TV these days,” Sorokina wrote in her LiveJournal blog, the day after news of her show’s cancelation got out. Leonid Mlechin, a regular participant on Svanidze’s show, called its end “a financial management decision.” With a touch of pathos and self-deprication, Mlechin added: “If I were the owner of the channel, I would never have fired these people and would have instead cherished them. But maybe that’s why I’m not the owner.”

The degrees to which Sorokina, Svanidze, and Bykov “sold out” appear to vary. Temperamentally, Sorokina seems have had less to lose by working for network TV as the least polemically oppositionist of the three. Svanidze helped create the much maligned and vastly unsuccessful “Pravoe Delo” party and he is a sitting member of the controversial “Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests.” However, he is also a regular contributor to the notoriously oppositionist online newspaper “Ezhednevnyi Zhurnal.” Earlier this month, he authored an article titled “An Almost Happy Year” that grimly stated: “Domestic events inside Russia give no cause for optimism.” Bykov seems to be the least “domesticated” of the group. In addition to his career as a journalist, he’s also a successful writer and poet. Apparently wanting to stir up some trouble, he tried talking Sorokina into hitting the airwaves with him to discuss Channel 5′s decision. (She seems to have declined.) Bykov had this to say to Novaya Gazeta about his show’s cancelation:

‘Kartina Maslom’ died under pressure from two sides, and none of the people who made it are to blame. It was impossible to talk about politics — any topic provoked red flags: we couldn’t touch on the upper echelons of power, we couldn’t mention the nesoglasnye, we didn’t have the right to invite the truly active oppositionists, and so on. Discussing culture (as we originally planned) wasn’t feasible on account of the low ratings it produced.

Dmitri Bykov

Of the three hosts, Bykov achieved the loudest controversy with a “Kartina Maslom” episode dedicated to soldiers and the military following Defense Minister Anatoly Serdiukov’s October scandal. Originally, “Kartina Maslom” advertised an upcoming episode titled “What Soldiers Keep Silent” that seemed to critically address the current state of the Russian military. In the episode that finally aired, however, top brass from the Joint Staff joined the show’s panel to assuage any fears about Russia’s military troubles. (Bykov claims that Colonel General Vasily Smirnov had been invited from the start, but only accepted once it became apparent that the show could prove scandalous without his participation.)

The decision to ditch these TV shows seems to have been largely financial (though Bykov’s brush with Serdiukov might have put him on some people’s lists), but why did these liberal talk shows perform so poorly in a market widely deprived of such programing? According to the insinuations and accusations of their hosts, the shows were crippled before they even started by censorship that restricted material to mainly historical topics and unexciting guests.

Will this experience radicalize “former collaborators” like Channel 5′s ex-hosts? In the last month, Dmitri Bykov interviewed Boris Nemtsov to joke about Putin’s “petushki” (a homophobic invective) and told Ekho Mosvky that Medvedev’s presidency threatens to resemble Lavrentii Beria’s brief stint as First Deputy Chairman of the USSR’s Council of Ministers after Stalin’s death.

Shevtsova’s piece argues that liberal collaborators “waver” because non-systemic oppositionists lead them to feel “awkward” and “self-disgusted” about betraying their true values. Will Sorokina, Svanidze, or Bykov come to regret — and later recant — their work for network television? Such an epiphany would require the journalists to acknowledge their own guilt in maintaining a charade of intellectual freedom.

More likely, ‘liberal conformists’ will continue to lash out at authorities for oppressing free speech, without much focus on “self-disgust” or professional expediency. This is, in part, self-preservation. As Sorokina reminisces about her career in that LiveJournal post, one sees that she’s bounced from opportunity to opportunity over the past twenty years, from RTR to NTV to Channel 5. Marching onto Triumfal’naia Square to curse Putin’s “bloody regime” may open doors for men like Ilya Yashin and Eduard Limonov (albeit some of them leading to jail cells), but it is not likely to ingratiate the producers and executives tasked with shaping TV journalism. (As you’ll see below, there are financial links that render such radicalism deeply unpopular in such circles.)

The low probability of a flood of mea culpas from “systemic liberals” is also a consequence of such people refusing to blame themselves. As Bykov argues, “none of the people who made [the show] are to blame.” The blame falls on a nefarious, anonymous web of censorship and cowardice that magically has nothing to do with “the people who made the show.”

Russian authorities have been maneuvering for years to orchestrate the various political wings from above — this is of course the essence of ‘managed democracy.’ Liberals have long complained that the state hobbles their movement and purposefully keeps it divided, whereas nationalist factions are supposedly nurtured and allowed to grow more confident.

Channel 5′s experiment in 2010 with these three liberal-leaning shows could be seen as an attempt to lend cooperative liberals more of a voice. On the other hand, perhaps it was a scheme to exploit their collaboration and prop up a potemkin village of intellectual criticism. According to Shevtsova (and many other Kremlin critics, no doubt), Russian elites rely on the appearance of free speech in order to “integrate” with the West. (What this means exactly is anybody’s guess.)

Or is that simply the liberals blaming others for their own disunion and unpopularity? According to critics like Maksim Kononenko, the liberal movement simply doesn’t have any charismatic figures these days. Could it be that today’s intelligentsia is inherently incapable of mass appeal?

There's a lot to smile about when you're Yuri Kovalchuk.

There is also a corporate dimension that links the fate of these three Channel 5 programs to the expansion and dominance of Channel One. On December 28, 2010, Arkady Solov’ev lost his job as Channel 5′s General Director to Aleksei Brodskii, the former Deputy Director of Channel One’s News Programs. Along with REN TV, Izvestia, and Lenta.ru, Channel 5 is owned and controlled by National Media Group, a private media holding company that is 55% owned by Bank Rossiya. The head of that bank’s board of directors and its largest shareholder is Yuri Kovalchuk, the financier rumored to be “Putin’s personal banker.”

In November last year, Vedomosti published a long article tracing the byzantine private ownership of Channel One. According to their research, Roman Abramovich (the sole non-government shareholder of the station after Boris Berezovsky sold him 49% of the company in 2001 for 175 million dollars) seems to have jettisoned 25% of his shares as early as 2002. Those shares went to two companies, Eberlink and RastrKom, that (according to an October 2010 article in Forbes.ru) recently moved headquarters from Moscow to Petersburg. According to Forbes.ru’s sources, Abramovich’s company Millhouse is in talks with Kovalchuk’s National Media Group for a sale of his remaining 24% of Channel One. This would complete the station’s migration to Putin’s Petersburg Circle and explain the increasingly close relationship between channels One and Five.

Konstantine Ernst and Larisa Sinel'shchikova, a power couple you don't want to mess with.

Aside from these ownership entanglements and Aleksei Brodskii, the other emerging link between the TV stations is television company “Krasnyi Kvadrat,” maker of most of Channel One’s biggest hit shows (including Shkola, Dve Zvezdy, Prozhektorperishilton, and Mult’-lichnosti). The company was founded by its current president, Larisa Sinel’shchikova, who happens to be married to Channel One’s General Director, Konstantin Ernst. In a December 30, 2010, interview with Afisha Magazine, Ernst explained that Channel One was struggling to implement what he called “vertical programming.” He was optimistic about the future, though, saying, “For the next attempt we’ll need at a minimum to make agreements with two other channels and more precisely envisage the product necessary for this.”

Has Ernst found a partner channel in Kovalchuk’s station? According to a Slon.ru report by Marina Naumova, several contracts Channel 5 has with content providers were due to expire on December 31, 2010. Anton Yakimov of Krasnyi Kvadrat has confirmed that the company is currently negotiating a deal with Channel 5. On New Year’s Day, the station apparently broadcasted a number of Krasnyi Kvadrat programs (including Starye Pesni o Glavnom, Karnaval’naia Noch’ 50 Let Spustia, and others). Television host Aleksandr Politkovskii (Anna Politkovskaya’s ex-husband) said of Ernst and Sinel’shchikova: “It’s a family business, where money moves from the left pocket — Channel One, which Ernst leads — to the right pocket — Krasnyi Kvadrat, which belongs to Sinel’shchikova.”