Progress on television

Now, of all the media, TV is the most important for us. This is what can effectively reach everyone. But so far, not all is well on Russian TV. The situation is also bad with good, original popular science programs. A pleasant exception is the “Progress” program on Channel 5. Journalists who create Progress answer TRV's questions.

1. Why is it so important to make your own programs? After all, there are many amazing popular science channels in the world for all types of viewers.

Anastasia Kazantseva (line producer)

— Indeed, there are quite a lot of good popular science programs in the world, but in Russia there are few of them. “Progress” focuses specifically on the Russian viewer. That is, firstly, we talk about Russian science, and secondly, we can be discovered as a result of random channel switching. Purchasing and translating good foreign software is an important and necessary matter, and it would be nice if more attention was paid to it. But doing your own is always more interesting.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva (correspondent)

— Popular science channels known in the world mainly produce two types of products: educational and entertainment programs and documentaries. The first ones are good in form and presentation: easy to understand and fascinating. But they have a very indirect relationship to science. They briefly mention classical researchers and their main theories and discoveries, but exclusively within the framework of the school curriculum. Documentary films are usually devoted to the history of discoveries or are built on the principle of “everything we know about ...” (mushrooms, pyramids). They usually have good visual effects, animation, but rarely provide any unique or special information that has not been stated in similar films before.

For me, the most interesting popular science format is educational programs on British general information channels or reports on science and technology on Western news programs. They have relevance and dynamics, although new information is often not enough here. The presentation is extremely popular, in general the content is banal and most often predictable (unless we are talking about exclusive filming of a significant scientific experiment).

Recently, the management of the Petersburg Channel 5 TV and Radio Broadcasting Company conducted a study of the perception of the Progress program using the focus group method. It turned out that viewers perceive “Progress” as a cross between Discovery’s “mythbusters” (“Progress,” according to focus groups, is much inferior in fascination and dynamics) and drawn-out documentaries. Most viewers would prefer films about animals to films about science: they see no difference in content (sic!), and the form is more interesting. At the same time, viewers note a lack of new, “surprising” information for them that can influence their picture of the world. “Progress” tries to combine the presentation of interesting facts and patterns with a fascinating dramatic presentation, but unlike most Western programs, it dives deeply into the topic and explains the root causes and mechanisms that underlie the phenomena, but are usually considered by default obscure, too special and not necessary for the viewer. So far we haven’t been able to achieve this combination well. In practice, some stories turn out to be descriptive and entertaining, others - specifically scientific. But there are some successful examples of combination. We are learning; It is gradually becoming clearer how to achieve this.

The second important point: “Progress” talks about Russian science. About researchers who continue to work in Russia, about specialists from our country who are now working abroad. We try to constantly compare how a theory is studied here and there, how experiments differ. There is no other program on our TV that regularly talks about Russian science in the reporting genre (news reports are usually too superficial). As one of the focus group participants put it, “they announce a story about scientists in the news, you start watching - and then again it’s about which minister visited them. Just politics, no science.”

2. Does Russia need a separate educational channel?

Anastasia Kazantseva

— As a person interested in the development of science journalism, I, of course, would like to answer that it is necessary. In practice, I think this is a utopia. Creating a science program costs more than, for example, a talk show. Creating a scientific channel will cost absolutely incredible money, which is unlikely to be recouped by advertising. Under current conditions, such a channel is unlikely to have a serious rating. Unless it will not be an educational channel, but a channel about scientific sensations, created in the image and likeness of a film about mold, but then it will very soon exhaust the supply of good scientists willing to cooperate with it.

The main function of TV now is to entertain the viewer. Scientific programs seem entertaining to a relatively narrow group of people who, by the nature of their work, are accustomed to quickly absorbing new information. I’m not sure that scientific television can be profitable in Russia now. Perhaps I’m wrong, and the audience resource is not exhausted, because in many countries scientific TV is developing. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to say what exactly the fundamental difference is between the organizational nuances in the West and here, which lead to the low profitability of popular science television in Russia.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

— I don’t think anyone in Russia will be able to create an educational channel yet. We simply do not know how to make such TV - so that it is watched and so that it is not at the same time a meaningless set of entertainment techniques. They will do it, no one will watch it - and this will discredit the very idea. We can’t do it because there is no demand - it’s clear that the circle is closed. If there were demand (incentive), we would study in the West, try different options on different channels, and eventually learn. I don’t know what incentive could be an alternative.

Maria Faddeeva (correspondent)

- It depends on what for. Mothers turn on a “television nanny” for their children. The main thing is not instead of education, but along with it. So it is with the educational channel: it is important that there is a good education system, and the channel can be an addition to it. Some scientific things certainly become more interesting and understandable when they are visualized. Nowadays we practically do not make educational popular science films for schoolchildren. We would love to make educational films on natural sciences if the government gave us such a grant. And they would start an educational channel.

3. Small TV channels are now actively developing; In addition, video journalism is well represented on the Internet. “Progress” itself is available online ( http://www.5-tv.ru/programs/1000047/ ). In the near future, shouldn't we expect that science journalism will be presented mainly there, rather than on the big TV channels? Are the resources of the big channels needed for some aspects of science journalism?

Anastasia Kazantseva

— The Internet is in many ways more convenient for popular science journalism: the possibility of combining a video and a popular science article, which exists on the Internet, has a very good effect on the perception of both. A significant part of the audience for any serious popular science programs are people who prefer a computer to a TV.

However, for example, only a few hundred people watch “Progress” on the Internet, and much more on TV. “Progress” was originally a TV show. In general, you can only find out that “Progress” is on the Internet either from the presenter’s announcement at the end of the program on TV, or if you come across a mention of it on a blog.

Do not forget that the Internet in general, and especially at home, is fast enough to watch videos, but much fewer people have a TV. Therefore, I would be more pleased with the reverse process - the transition of popular science journalism, which originated on the Internet, to television channels. But if we talk about the idea of ​​​​creating a special popular science channel, then for now it can only be small.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

— I don’t see the point in making a special TV about science for special (understanding) people. It is clear that the audience of small channels or an Internet site is more educated, more targeted, and better able to evaluate the product. But television is by definition a mass genre. The task is to educate, to arouse interest (which was not there), and a response. And this is much more difficult and interesting than working with an understandable and prepared target audience.

Maria Faddeeva

“We don’t believe that science should be the property of only those who specifically found an article or film on a small channel or online. We believe that science needs to be promoted on mass channels to generate interest among people. And then they go to the Internet for deeper and more detailed data.

4. What is the target audience of Progress? What audience are mostly addressed by popular science stories and programs on our TV? Is there some kind of bias here?

Igor Makarov (presenter and correspondent)

— If we take it broadly, the target audience of Progress is everyone who is interested in the cutting edge of science and technology, who is interested in those trends that imperceptibly and very quickly change everyday life. Hence our attention to science not just as an abstract and abstract side of social life. The purpose of the program is to make the problems of scientific life interesting and understandable to the average viewer, to convey the “spirit of progress”, the fruits of which we, without hesitation, use; show, among other things, the consumer significance of discoveries and developments. Science is now truly on the periphery of public attention. And this mutual segregation does not benefit anyone. Society is weaning itself from seeing science as the foundation for its development. Domestic science, without attention and financial resources, is losing ground on the world stage and is falling out of current trends.

According to sociologists, our audience is mostly male. These are mainly men under 3540 years of age, with higher education. But we are also watched by schoolchildren, students and older people. The broadcast format was specially created in order to reach the widest possible social and age audience. "Progress" is a weekly television magazine about science. But in a magazine (if it is not a special issue) it is impossible, and indeed not necessary, to devote most of the stories to one topic. It will be boring. Hence the varied thematic content of the layout. Topics are grouped under permanent headings.

The main topic is a critical examination of a current socially significant or fundamental problem from the world of science. For example, the preparation and launch of experiments at the LHC at CERN, the mechanics of the global financial crisis, the myths and reality of global warming, religious scientists and creationism, molecular mechanisms of aging, the hydrogen economy and its limitations, teaching language to deaf-blind children, the antibiotic crisis and the prospects for the use of bacteriophages, etc. .d.

Current report - the most interesting thing that happened in science over the past week. For example, the presentation of the Nobel Prizes, doping scandals in sports, the first patient cured of AIDS, the G20 summit, the dollar economy and alternative reserve currencies, plane crashes and pilot/controller training, Arctic expeditions and the fight for the shelves.

Stories of discoveries / Heroes and monuments of progress. For example, penicillin, anesthesia, telegraph, nylon, diesel, etc.

How this is done - the origin of simple things. How they explore and extract oil, how they bake bread, grow bananas, make perfume, conduct focus groups, etc.

In the previous format (focus groups recognized it as too complex - now they have simplified it extremely, only stories remained in the program) there was also an interview and our own experiment. The interview made it possible to invite “creators of progress” to the studio - from Nobel laureates to prominent scientists, engineers and businessmen working at the forefront of science and technology. And in the “experiment” section, we recreated with our own hands historical experiments that changed the course of science.

On Russian TV, popular science programs are mainly represented by translated films and programs from Western channels (Discovery, National Geographic, BBC). Domestic programs rely either on the youth entertainment segment (“Galileo” is essentially an analogue of the Western “How do they do it?”, “How is this done?”), or on an older audience (from 35-40 years old) and highly professional audience (“Gordon”, “Obvious-Incredible”, “Civilization”). The peculiarity of “Progress” is the primary attention to domestic science, the consideration of even Western materials from the point of view of the Russian viewer, the obligatory translation of “their problems and solutions” into the language of “native aspens”. Unlike talk shows, “Progress” is a reporter’s program; we focus on current reporting. Instead of inviting scientists to a sterile television center and talking abstractly about science, we go to them - in the laboratory, on an expedition, in the field, to show where and how they came to their conclusions, we try to convey to the viewer the feeling of an experimental experiment developing in real time. Sciences.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

— In practice, it turns out that “Progress” (data from TNS Media, age 18+, children are not taken into account) is of greater interest to men aged 25-45 than to other groups. But we continue to focus on a wider circle. The plots differ significantly in this sense. There is no clear goal to appeal to a specific audience by age, gender or level of education. But for me personally, it is important that the program is interesting to well-educated people, including specialists in the issue being covered. I don't think the popular narrative contradicts this idea in any way.

5. Do you think that science journalism is a very special field and people need to have some special qualities or training to work in it? Can, for example, a journalist today successfully film a story about the Olympic pentathlon, tomorrow about the theft of expensive cars, and the day after tomorrow about Russian participation in CERN projects?

Anastasia Kazantseva

— In a sense, each area is special, and each requires qualities without which it is difficult or even impossible to work. For popular science journalism, a similar quality is the readiness to perceive new information. It is absolutely impossible to receive such training as to know everything in advance. But it is possible to receive training that will allow you to more or less effectively understand the process.

I believe that a journalist can successfully film stories on various topics. He doesn't become an expert on every topic, he just understands it a little better than the viewer. But, of course, not every day: two stories a month is the speed limit for quality work. At best - three, if the topics are not complex.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

- Qualities - yes: the ability to quickly delve into new material, highlight the main thing and, most importantly, spend hours reading articles and talking with specialists.

Maria Faddeeva

— It’s better for a journalist to film about CERN after at least re-reading a couple of physics textbooks. I constantly notice ugly geographical, physical, biological and other errors in stories about science in news or other non-scientific programs. The kind you don't need to be a scientist to avoid. You just need to remember, at least for a “C”, the school curriculum. It's about the general level of education and how well people prepare for certain materials.

6. What does a scientist need to know before contacting journalists? How to distinguish a good journalist from a bad one? It’s no secret that many scientists, after the first unsuccessful interview experience, flatly refuse subsequent interviews.

Igor Makarov

— In fact, it’s quite easy to distinguish a good journalist (and they exist!) from a bad one. It is enough to first talk to him by phone and ask him to provide questions for conversation and Internet links to already published articles or filmed reports. In addition, it’s a good idea to watch a couple of episodes of the program to get your bearings in the format. Often, mutual displeasure between scientists and journalists occurs precisely because of a misunderstanding of the broadcast format. Scientists are offended when they are told that in a story (6-8 minutes), an episode with their participation will take 2-3 minutes, and an interview, which is filmed for 20-30 minutes, will last only 7 minutes on air. It seems that this is very little. Well, what can you tell us during this time? The logic is something like this: “I’ve been studying my topic all my life and still don’t understand anything, but here you want to condense everything into a minute.” And instead of briefly talking about the main conclusion from their own research (even 3 minutes is, admittedly, a lot, an entire news story on TV), they present the history of physics from Newton or biology from Leeuwenhoek (then they are offended that they were not included).

But the main problem is rather that a very large percentage of scientists in Russia, in principle, do not want or do not consider it necessary to talk about their work to a wide audience. Hence the attitude towards journalists as paparazzi who want to spy on something, steal something and necessarily distort it, present it in a sensational form (journalists, of course, are also to blame, but there is the newspaper “Life”, and there is “Kommersant”). Typical reaction: “Television? “You’re just showing your bare asses!” You explain: “We want to make a story about your research!” The answer was neither yes nor no, filming was postponed under various pretexts. A month later, the hero disappears, citing chronic illness or employment. And then, when the story comes out with the participation of his colleagues from other institutes, the hero suddenly appears! In the Internet. And he finds time for weeks to scold stupid journalists who didn’t ask him and filmed complete nonsense. It would be better if they filmed about asses!

It is difficult to film our science and our scientists. Working with Western universities and laboratories is much easier. On the website of any scientific institute there is a list of current studies with results, names of authors and contact numbers/email addresses. As a rule, scientists themselves have presentation materials (filming of experiments, photographs and popular presentations about the essence of the work), which they can send in advance for review. But the main thing is the attitude and interest in cooperation with science journalists. We have interviewed Nobel laureates many times (Mario Capecchi, James Watson, Luc Montagnier), and all of them invariably found time to tell Russian journalists (to whom they generally owe nothing) about their research in detail. They often emphasize that scientists have an obligation to report to society because they spend public money. For foreign scientists, articles in popular publications (New Scientist, Scientific American, etc.) or reports about their work on TV are no less significant than publications in Science or Nature. After all, potential sponsors of their future research are more likely to learn about it from journalists than from highly specialized journals. Therefore, scientific journalism in the West is in many ways an engine of progress, an element of a full-fledged scientific environment, which, unfortunately, is still missing in Russia.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

- I don’t see any problem. Journalists are different, and that's normal. If a scientist, during a preliminary telephone conversation, made the wrong conclusion about how the correspondent would construct the material, it is the scientist’s fault. If he was deceived, I am absolutely sure that in such a situation it is correct to complain publicly (for example, write a short post on the Internet with the names of journalists).

The problem is different: Russian scientists (unlike Western ones) often have a completely detached idea of ​​television journalism. Every second person imagines that a big documentary should be made about him; everything he says must be included in the text with all special details. The other extreme: scientists generally have a negative attitude towards the genre of television reporting and are confident that journalists cannot do anything good about their work. How to deal with this? — Contribute to the development of the information field of popular science journalism, for example, on the Internet. We should talk more about it and its different qualities, and scientists should speak out. And they are still passive (with the exception of those pseudoscientists with degrees who praise the film “Mold” on the website of Channel One).

Maria Faddeeva

— Ask the journalist three questions from the school curriculum in the relevant discipline. Determine the degree of adequacy and deceitfulness-truthfulness intuitively. And ask for your part of the plot to be proofread.

And for those who have already been burned by working with journalists, it is better to conclude an agreement with the media - that the filming will be carried out only if, before the release of the story, its text is checked by the given scientist for scientific errors.

7. Who would you prefer to do the story with: a strong scientist who has made a significant contribution to the problem being described, but at the same time speaks terribly dryly or is afraid of cameras, etc., or with a much more presentable scientist who, having a good understanding of the problem, has nothing to do with a specific job?

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

— These two types of scientists are good for different genres. With the first it is impossible to record an interesting interview in the form of a dialogue, the second is ideal for this. But in a plot that is much more dynamically edited, I prefer the first option (it is still more difficult to produce, but much more justified). He speaks dryly - we dilute it with voiceover text. If you are afraid of the camera, we write it not directly at the camera, but in everyday work, which the camera watches from the side. Still, the role of the individual, the “hero” of science, who directly conducts research is important; without this, the plot is impossible. The exception is when a scientist is completely unable to formulate the essence of a scientific problem, or at least part of it, in a few sentences. This, unfortunately, is a common case. "What do you study? — I'm studying how NN2XY proteins pass through the membrane of such and such a cell. - Why is this important to understand? What does this explain to us? What pattern do you see? - I did not understand the question. - Fine. What is the conclusion of your work studying the NN2XY proteins? “They pass through the cell membrane because the amino acid 2XY is the same as the protein MM2XY.” Then we're totally talking about his work behind the scenes.

Anastasia Kazantseva

- We will try to remove both. We will give the second a little more airtime so that the viewer understands the essence of the problem from his speech, we will take a little airtime from the first so that his fear of the camera does not catch the eye, and behind the scenes we will describe the importance of his contribution.

Maria Faddeeva

- If the first, dry-talking person is very famous, then his appearance in the frame will suit us regardless of how he speaks. The main thing is to say it to the point.

8. Imagine that you have learned that very important, relevant scientific work has been done somewhere. But it’s difficult to talk about it, because the topic is complex. As a result, a choice arises - choose two points from: short, accessible, absolutely correct. What will you choose? Or will you simply not take on the plot if such a choice arises?

Anastasia Kazantseva

— This is not a rare problem; to one degree or another, we solve it when preparing each story. And, accordingly, there is no ready-made solution. Every time there are turbulent wars for shortening and lengthening, for greater correctness or greater clarity. It turns out something in between, sometimes more successful, sometimes less successful. But if the topic is really very complex, then we won’t take on it, because the correspondent himself won’t understand it, and then how can he film the story? Let's say we never said anything about string theory. We don’t understand what it is well enough to talk about it, although theoretically, of course, we agree that it is a very significant concept for physics.

Ekaterina Alyabyeva

— I have other criteria: ease of visualization of the topic. If an experiment has something to clearly show the audience, I certainly won’t refuse to talk about it. It will just take more time to adapt the text for viewers. But this is how the coolest stories come out. Absolutely correct - less important than for the viewer to understand at least something. I am ready to sacrifice part of the idea of ​​the experiment. In stories about CERN experiments, my colleague had to sacrifice everything that was most interesting to him and talk in a simplified way about a couple of central ideas. This, I believe, is the correct approach, which does not exclude the fact that one should strive to tell it clearly and in the full beauty of great theoretical science - this is an ideal.

9. Which of your episodes or stories are most dear to you?

Maria Faddeeva

— I like the plot “biochemistry of happiness”; there we tried to debunk the “endorphin” and “adrenaline” myths that travel from program to program all over television - to talk about how these hormones actually work and what of what lives in the brains of ordinary people is nonsense, and what is approaching reality. For example, there is no such thing as adrenaline addiction. The feeling of high is not caused by the release of adrenaline into the blood, but by the concomitant release of endorphin.

There was a great story about the “crisis”. In it we again explained the mechanisms to people.

Why, because some bad people in America did not repay their mortgages, we in Russia had a collapse of the financial system, and enterprises began to lay off people. I think the plot was a success. And the commission of the “Golden Pen” journalistic award also thought so (ed. note: The story received an award in the “business journalism” category).

Anastasia Kazantseva

— I value those stories in the creation of which I took part. Not because I'm so smug, but because I have the opportunity to watch a miracle happen. This is similar to what happens in science, when a beautiful and logical concept eventually emerges from a lot of disparate and contradictory data. Before the release of the story, we have a large amount of video materials, including boring, scattered, faded, incomprehensible. From them it takes a long and difficult time to put together, like a puzzle or like beads, a plot that is interesting to non-specialists and which carries correct and interesting information. I love.

Questions were asked by Sergey Popov