An epidemic of live public-affairs shows has broken out on crisis-era Russian television.
The talk shows save the stations a hefty amount of money and at the same time allow them to address the burning issues of the day.
ORT, the leading national television station, early this month premiered "Vremya i my," or "Time and Us" on prime time Sunday, in which veteran anchor Vladimir Pozner talks with invited newsmakers and a studio audience about a hot issue of the week.
The private TV 6 channel introduced "V mire lyudei," or "In the World of People," at 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The anchors converse with guests who answer prerecorded questions from people on the street.
Another channel, Moscow city's TV Center, has two recently launched weekly shows: "Na Okhotnom" is set in the Manezh Square shopping mall and has guests and shoppers discussing social issues, while "Futbol v Dialogakh," or "Soccer in Dialogues," has actors, politicians and businessmen talking about the inroads that Russia's most popular sport has made in various spheres of life.
All these shows have one thing in common: They respond to a growing demand for political and economic news, while helping stations adjust to the sudden dramatic drop in advertising revenues.
Eduard Sagalayev, the president of TV6 and father of live shows on Russian television, says such programs produced in-house are 20 percent to 50 percent cheaper than other types.
Live shows, once barred from Soviet television screens because they could not be censored, were a sign of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the late 1980s.
It was then that Sagalayev, who ran state television's youth department, launched "Dvenadtsaty Etazh," or "12th Floor," and "Vzglyad," or "Outlook." The two talk shows revolutionized Russian public affairs programming and uncensored voices were aired across the nation for the first time.
But with the growing commercialization of television, rough live broadcasting was replaced with sleek and sophisticated programming, commissioned or purchased from foreign and Russian producers and distributors.
Today, the lack of cash has driven channels back to live interactive broadcasting. Even before the crisis some stations had planned to expand political broadcasting as the election campaigns of 1999 and 2000 drew near, but the crisis pushed forward these plans."A crisis period results in a growing demand and hunger for news," said Stanislav Kucher, who heads TV6's public affairs broadcasting and anchors its weekly analytical show "Obozrevatel." "You may not engage in politics, but politics will engage you anyway," he said.
The program's purpose, he said, is to establish a connection between ordinary people and those in power and to address topics that affect everybody's life.
"We have to speak about how we together should get out of this situation," Kucher said.
Originally, TV6 had wanted to commission the new program "In the World of People" from the VID production company, but to reduce costs it relied on in-house production and the first program went on the air Oct. 5 without much preparation.
Four anchors take turns talking to newsmakers in the studio on four days of the week. In general, Monday is reserved for politics, Tuesday for business, Wednesday for regional issues and Thursday for the media.
But the subject often is affected by the dominating news of the day, as it was Oct. 7, when Kucher himself anchored a program devoted to the national day of protest.
Last Thursday, when much of country's male audience was expected to watch a Spartak-Inter Milan soccer game on another channel, NTV, "In the World of People" had Moscow Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev and anchorwoman Yekaterina Shergova discussing the relationship between sports and politics in Russia. Viewers could keep track of the game on monitors in the back of the studio.
On Monday, Mikhail Kozhukhov discussed employment problems with Labor Minister Sergei Kalashnikov and the president of the Triza employment agency, Georgy Pavlov. As is usual for the show, the discussion was interspersed with prerecorded interviews.
Viewers could call in - at 6 rubles a call - to give their opinion on whether or not they want to work. At the end of the 30-minute program, 218 of the 401 callers said they wanted to work, while the remaining 183 said they did not.
Live shows aim to become interactive, with feedback coming from the audience during the course of the show. "In the World of People" plans to take call-in questions from viewers and establishing a link-up with a monitor on the street, so passers-by can participate in the program.
TV6, which has about 10 percent of Russia's television market, was the last major channel to join the race for news and public affairs programming when last year it introduced Kucher's "Obozrevatel" and regular news programs produced by TSN television news service.
"Obozrevatel" has been credited as the most balanced analytical show on Russian television.
Kucher says the channel's balanced approach is due to it not being controlled by any single major shareholder. Its stakes are held by Sagalayev, Boris Berezovsky's Logovaz, the Moscow city government and Lukoil.