 | |
| Country | Russia |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Russia, CIS, US and formallyCanada. |
| Headquarters | Moscow, Russia |
| Programming | |
| Language(s) | Russian |
| Picture format | 1080iHDTV (downscaled to16:9576i for theSDTV feed) |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Gazprom Media |
| History | |
| Launched | 10 October 1993; 31 years ago (1993-10-10) |
| Replaced | Russian Universities (1967–1996) |
| Links | |
| Website | ntv |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Digital terrestrial television | Channel 4 |
NTV (Cyrillic:НТВ) is a Russianfree-to-air television channel that was launched as a subsidiary ofVladimir Gusinsky's companyMedia-Most [ru].[1][2] Since 14 April 2001Gazprom Media controls the network. NTV[3] has no official meaning according to Igor Malashenko, the author of the name and co-founder of the company, but in the 1990s unofficial transcripts of the acronym include "New" (Novoje), "Independent" (Nezavisimoje), "Non-governmental" (Negosudarstvennoje), "Our" (Nashe).[4][5]
Gusinsky founded NTV broadcasting in October 1993 on channel 4. It moved to channel 5 in January 1994.[2] He attracted talented journalists and news anchors of the time such asTatiana Mitkova,Leonid Parfyonov,Mikhail Osokin,Yevgeniy Kiselyov,Vladimir A. Kara-Murza,Victor Shenderovich and others. The channel set high professional standards in Russian television, broadcasting live coverage and sharp analysis of current events. Starting before thedissolution of Soviet Union asFourth Programme, the channel broadcast a daily news programmeSegodnya and a weekly news-commentary programmeItogi which was jointly supported by the United States magazineNewsweek (at the time, a subsidiary ofThe Washington Post Company, now Graham Holdings Company).[2][6] In the early 1990s,Video International [ru], a multibillion-dollaradvertising agency, obtained exclusive advertising rights on NTV.[7]
It commented favorably on PresidentBoris Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996.[citation needed]
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.[8]
During parliamentary elections in 1999 and presidential elections in 2000, NTV was critical of theSecond Chechen War,Vladimir Putin and the political partyUnity backed by him. In the puppet showKukly ('Puppets') in the beginning of February 2000, the puppet of Putin acted as Little Zaches in a story based onE.T.A. Hoffmann'sLittle Zaches Called Cinnabar, in which blindness causes villagers to mistake an evil gnome for a beautiful youth.[9] This provoked a fierce reaction from Putin's supporters. On 8 February the newspaperSankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti published a letter signed by the Rector ofSt. Petersburg State UniversityLyudmila Verbitskaya, the Dean of its Law DepartmentNikolay Kropachyov and some of Putin's other presidential campaign assistants that urged the prosecution of the authors of the show for what they considered acriminal offence.[citation needed]
On 24 March 2000, two days before thepresidential elections, NTV featured theRyazan apartment bombing of fall 1999 in the talk showIndependent Investigation. The interviews of the residents of the Ryazan apartment building, along with FSB public relations directorAlexander Zdanovich and Ryazan branch head Alexander Sergeyev was filmed a few days earlier. On 26 March,Boris Nemtsov voiced his concern over the possible shut-down of NTV for airing the talk.[10]
Seven months later, NTV general managerIgor Malashenko said at theJFK School of Government that the Information MinisterMikhail Lesin had warned him on several occasions. Malashenko's recollection of Lesin's warning was that by airing the talk show NTV had "crossed a line" and that the NTV managers were "outlaws" in the eyes of the Kremlin.[11]
According toAlexander Goldfarb, Malashenko told him thatValentin Yumashev had brought a warning from the Kremlin, one day before the airing of the show, promising in no uncertain terms that the NTV managers "should consider themselves finished" if they went ahead with the broadcast.[12]
On 11 May 2000, tax police, backed by officers from the general prosecutor's office and theFSB, stormed the Moscow headquarters of NTV andMedia-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 requested NTV to exclude the puppet of Putin fromKukly.[13] 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 programItogi went on investigating corruption in the Russian government and theautumn 1999 blasts in Russia.
On 13 June 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 enterpriseRusskoye 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.[14]
On 15 July, the puppet of Putin acted in theKukly show asGirolamo Savonarola.
On 19 July, investigators of the office of theProsecutor 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 withMikhail Lesin,Minister of Media, on 20 July. Under the "shares for freedom" transaction or Protocol No.6 (Протокол N.6. Доля свободы) agreement, Gusinsky would discharge his debts by selling Media-Most toGazprom-Media, 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 26 January 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.[15]
Putin met with leading NTV journalists on 29 January, 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.[16]
Around that time American media mogulTed Turner (owner and founder of theTurner Broadcasting System subsidiary ofTime Warner) appeared to be going to buy Gusinsky's share, but this has never happened.
On 3 April,Gazprom Media headed byAlfred Kokh by violating the procedure conducted a shareholders' meeting which removed Kiselyov from the NTV Director General position.
On 14 April 2001,Gazprom took over NTV by force and brought in its own management team. Its director-general Yevgeniy Kiselyov was replaced byBoris Jordan. Many leading journalists, including Yevgeniy Kiselyov,Svetlana Sorokina, Viktor Shenderovich,Vladimir A. Kara-Murza,Dmitry Dibrov, left the company. Leonid Parfyonov andTatyana Mitkova remained. Kiselyov'sItogi program was closed down, replaced by Parfyonov'sNamedni.
Citizens concerned by the threat to the freedom of speech in Russia argued that the financial pressure was inspired by theVladimir 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 andTVS, were also shut down.[17]
In January 2003,Boris Jordan was ousted as director general and replaced byNikolay Senkevich, son of TV-presenterYuri Senkevich fromChannel One.[18] A few days earlier he was also discharged from Media-Most director-general position, where he had replacedAlfred Kokh in October 2001. As insiders claimed, Jordan was sacked because NTV had carried a live translation of the culmination of theMoscow 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 theMoscow Manege on the day of theRussian presidential elections on 14 March 2004, and the assassination of the pro-Russian President of ChechnyaAkhmad Kadyrov onVictory Day 9 May 2004.
On 1 June 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 programmeNamedni was taken off the air.[19][20] Its last announced episode never aired. Shortly before this, Parfyonov had been forbidden to present an interview with Malika Yandarbieva, widow of Chechen rebel leaderZelimkhan Yandarbiev. Zelimkhan Yandarbiev had been assassinated in exile inQatar earlier that year. Parfyonov had shared this decision with the public on 31 May.[21]
On 5 July 2004, Senkevich was replaced byVladimir Kulistikov (b. 1952) as director general of NTV.[22] Tamara Gavrilova, formerly a fellow student with Vladimir Putin atLeningrad State University, was appointed deputy director general.[23]
Soon the political programmesFreedom of Speech hosted bySavik Shuster (Shuster works inUkraine since 2005[24][25]),Personal Contribution hosted byAleksandr Gerasimov, andRed Arrow were closed down.
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From 2006 to 2009, NTV ran weekly news commentary programmeSunday Night in a talk-show format and political talk-showOn The Stand, both hosted byVladimir Solovyov, as well as weekly news commentary programmeReal Politics hosted on Saturdays from 2005 to 2008 by political analyst and key Kremlin adviserGleb Pavlovsky.
NTV began to be broadcast in widescreen in April 2013, hosted its own coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and joined the long list of Russian TV networks broadcasting in HD on 9 February 2015.
In August 2014, NTV aired a documentary titled13 Friends of the Junta, which described critics of Russia's policies in Ukraine as "traitors" and supporters of "fascists".The Moscow Times reported that footage ofAndrey Makarevich's concert inSviatohirsk "was merged with images of the fighting that he supposedly endorsed. The program never mentions that the concert was for the benefit of Ukraine's internally displaced children."[26] In 2015, NTV fired a journalist who criticized Vladimir Putin and his policy towards Ukraine.[27]
Another program "Anatomy of a protest" was also presenting most of theanti-government protesters in former USSR countries as "Western puppets" or CIA inspired agents.[28] The producers of the program, Pyotr Drogovoz and Liliya Parfyonova, were also accused of frequently receiving wiretap information from FSB which allowed them to pay surprise visits with camera on various opposition meetings.[29]
Shortly after theCrocus City Hall attack, for which theIslamic State – Khorasan Province claimed responsibility, NTV broadcast a doctored video usingaudio deepfaking, purporting to showOleksiy Danilov, the Secretary of theNational Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, confirming Ukrainian involvement in the attack, supposedly saying, "It's fun in Moscow today, I think it's very fun. I would like to believe that we will arrange such fun for them more often."[30][31] The deepfake was created by patching together previous news streams of the Ukrainian1+1 channel.[30][32]
In 2022, theDenis Diderot Committee, a European group of academic researchers and professionals called for sanctions against NTV Plus for having cancelled various international news channels from its line-up.[33][34]
On 8 May 2022, theOffice of Foreign Assets Control of theUnited States Department of the Treasury placed sanctions on NTV Broadcasting Company pursuant toExecutive Order14024 for being owned or controlled by, or for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, theGovernment of Russia.[35]
The logo design has remained relatively the same since April 1994, with the НТВ typograph and a ball below the "T".
Its first logo in 1993 featured a simple НТВ typograph, but this was replaced with another logo on 11 April 1994, featuring the НТВ typograph with a ball. This would be the template for the succeeding 5 logos. During August 1994, the logo featured a white outline, though still retaining the НТВ typograph, and the ball has a gradient. However, in September 1994, this was replaced with a black-and-white striped outlined logo, with the ball touching the letters.
Over time, the ball would become larger, but since 2001, the ball is smaller. The 1997 logo featured an entirely black and thicker outline, and the ball has a glass feel. In 2001, a similar logo was launched, but with a blue outline and a smaller ball. On 4 June 2007, a new logo was launched, featuring the 2001 logo, but entirely white (except the ball) inside a green box. Logos similar to the current logo, with a larger typograph, are used in idents and promos. In 2010, a variant of the 2007 logo was introduced, but without the green box. It is commonly used as the on-screen bug, changing between it and the green box logo.
The colorful "NTV" logo as well as the iconic green sphere were designed bySimon Levin, the Russian designer, and became a symbol for the new graphic language of television design in Russia.[citation needed]
When it first launched on 10 October 1993, the logo was in the lower right corner. However, on 1 December that same year, the logo moved to the lower left.
