Channel context

Dr. Zhivago collects on the NTV channel an audience of about 10-12% with a rating of 4-5%. This means that the series of Alexander Proshkin with the script of Yuri Arabov, surprisingly accurately conveying the spirit of Pasternak's prose; with magnificent acting works by Oleg Menshikov, Chulpan Khamatova and Oleg Yankovsky; With the bewitching music of Eduard Artemyev, they choose twelve spectators from a hundred inclusive TV, and five of those who have this TV in principle. While the series “Alexander Garden” almost at the same time collects about 30% of the audience on the “Channel One”, and a repetition of the “secrets of the investigation” on the Russia channel is 23%.

Does this mean that the story from the Kremlin life, from the point of view of television, set by the main “man-fan” of our TV, is more significant than the series of Proshkin? No. Primitive dialogs, standard directorial decisions, the game (or, rather, the tunnel) of the actors will not go into any comparison with similar components in the Doctor Zhivago. The only advantage is shooting on the territory of the Kremlin, where before Pimanov, who was checked on documentary-Krelev projects, was not allowed to shoot anyone, but this first pink film does not save his first. The situation is not much better and with the “secrets of the investigation” with Anna Kovalchuk, who had not yet become Margarita from Seril Bortko, who had giving birth to a giving birth in the frame at that time.

But the impartial figures of telemetry show that a real worthy multi -part film, which is Dr. Zhivago, watches two to a half times less than rustic series on other channels. Does this mean that our viewer finally sank and prefers the sight not of high quality, but primitive? Not either. Do not write off the deliberate primitivism of our TV on a wretched viewer, who consumes only low -end, thereby preventing television creators from creating and imprisoning an elevated air. The audience is not so insignificant as other television prisoners would like to imagine it. Moreover, I am sure that, a “doctor Zhivago” appeared on the first or second channel, the situation would be completely different. And the ratings comparable to the indicators of the “Masters and Margaritas” at “Russia” (58% - the first series in Moscow), or the television and the television of “9 companies” on the “First Channel” (51% in Russia) would be provided. And the audience interest would be completely different.

So what is the problem?

In the context of the channel.

Imagine a refrigerator, opening which you find a huge number of foul -smelling products, and among this stench and rot several completely fresh delicacies. But the spirit from the refrigerator is such that you want to either slam the door and run away, or throw everything away that stored on its regiments, not understanding what was stirred up and moldy, and what had just been bought in a gastronomic boutique. The exquisite foi-grade or expensive cheese, which you are forced to get from the refrigerator, full of its own soup or a badly smelling sausage, is unlikely to cause you a surge of gastric juice and a desire to enjoy delicacies, forgetting about the just sniffed smell. Such a gastric association may not quite correctly, and excessively nervous, but emotionally quite accurate.

The NTV channel in its current form, under the leadership of the general director of Vladimir Kulistikov, made a bet at all on the viewer to whom the Pasternakovsky series would give food for thought. The Kulistikov team for two years of work on NTV created a kind of Crime Chanel - a criminal channel - not in the cable network, but in the public domain. The calculation went on an active, even somewhat aggressive, mainly male audience who is close and understandable to the difficulties of the heroes of the “brigade” or “people from steel”, but by no means the mental suffering of the doctor and the poet, painfully choosing two eras, two lives.

Having called the “Doctor of Zhivago” “Premiere of the Year” and sacrificingly giving the series the everyday prime time, the NTV leadership either did not understand, or it did not betray a simple fact-it is impossible to feed a very definite audience to a very definite television product on a day, so that then, to force this audience to enjoy the sight of a different level. Or to bring another audience to the channel, this level and this spectacle is worthy. It won't work. The first of these audiences in the suffering of Yuri Zhivago simply “does not get it”, and switches to “Dom-2” to TNT or reality show with Sergey Zverev to Muz-TV. And in the second audience in five years, which passed from the collapse of the old NTV, the reflex developed by previous years to turn on the TV from the fourth button simply disappeared.

From the habit, the first thing to press on the remote control was the fourth button to wean yourself for a long time. But three times changing NTV to their old audience helped this. And the habit of starting your television evening from this channel repelled for a long time. And to return this habit even by a series of such a level as “Dr. Zhivago” is quite difficult. Lost skills are not so simply restored. The audience once does not believe the channel, which is now called NTV, does not believe that something worthwhile may appear in the current context of the channel. And the new NTV audience is not going to believe the series of Proshkin.

You can object to me that in the current Russian television reality there is no channel whose context is morally worthy of Pasternak's film adaptation. Unless - “culture”, but the percentage of the viewers watched the series on this reservation for intellectuals would be even less. All other channels, you say, are rather commercial-state television with an appropriate context of Mamontov’s investigations, the revelations of Karaulov, Pushkov’s pathetics, the angry rebukes of Leontiev and the Sunday gloss of Tolstoy and Brilev.

Then you can argue which of the contexts is better. Or worse. Or less destructive, in the case of the appearance of television works of a different level in the immediate vicinity. Not state, in the understanding of the "statehood" in which it is consumed now in the Kremlin. And not commercial, in that understanding of commercial success, which is now determined exclusively by the figures of the ratings, and with them the amounts of advertising revenues.

But with all the controversy of the available television contexts, one thing can be said for sure. The first and second channels, with all their statehood and commercialization, are able to adequately submit worthy television works to the viewer. Previously, the NTV channel was well able to do this, but in five years he finally forgot how to. The current NTV, accustomed to operating on television fakes, one-day, is simply not able to work with a real television work. He does not know what to do with it. And he promotes somehow constrained, almost bashfully. And the “Film about the film”-the inevitable addition to all the noticeable works of recent times-for some reason makes it broadcast not at the end of the project, as is customary, but at the end of the first week of show. And in every possible way it is embarrassed that you have to trade, sorry, broadcast, not a “zone” and not a “brigade”, but some kind of incomprehensible to anyone the “Doctor Zhivago” needed. The feeling that Malevich’s picture was hanged in the Shilov gallery. And they are waiting for her to be appreciated there ...