Translated material
NTV: People and Legends
Evgeny Kiselev about the "old" and "new" NTV
20 years ago, a non -state television company was created, in the history of which - both the highest professional ups and a rapid fall 
Older readers probably remember the lines of Galich about the looters who stood at the coffin of Pasternak and carry an honorary guard. Last week, something similar happened: people who once seized and killed the “old” NTV celebrated the anniversary of the television company, which for the most part they had nothing to do with the birth of. Moreover, that created in her place another, completely disgusting to what she thought.
The “old” NTV, in the creation of which I participated and at which I worked for seven and a half years, has long been gone and will not be. Something died by itself, something was destroyed absolutely consciously and purposefully, sometimes, I would say, vengefully. They finished off after our departure: they closed the “dolls”, then the “other day” by Parfenov and the “freedom of speech” by Schuster. Now, under the 20th anniversary, they removed NTVshnikov from the air, tore the claws and cut off the last teeth “central television”, the only program that inspired the hope that the spirit of the “old” NTV was still warm and can be reborn. However, I'm not sure that someone needs it today. The target audience, for which the “old” NTV was once created, in my opinion, is simply not today. That is, it is, but television for her has long been neither a source of information or a means of entertainment. Today, the Audience of the “Old” NTV recognizes the news either in the car on the Radio “Echo of Moscow” or “Kommersant-FM”, or from the Internet, reads the relevant analytics there. Political discussions do not look - and where to watch them? - And she leads on social networks herself. If something is watching on TV, then the Rain channel. To a large extent for modifications of fashion. "
Something died by itself, something was destroyed absolutely consciously and purposefully, sometimes, I would say, vengeful
“In the same way, 20 years ago it was fashionable NTV, we even had such an advertising slogan on T -shirts, circles, badges:“ I only look at NTV. ”
The main spectator of the current NTV is a long time no creative class. They say that one of the current leaders of the channel once described the target audience of the “new” NTV: “Old man, imagine a common camera in a pre -trial detention center.”
Surkov verdict
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| Vladimir Gusinsky. July 1995 |
According to the logic of NTV things, it should not have been born. Large businessmen, with whom, then, at the very beginning of the 90s, I had to communicate on the topic: "Would you like to invest in the creation of private television?" - they confidently said "no." I remember the conversation with Vladislav Surkov very well, who then worked in the public relations service of one of the first major private banks Menatep Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The meaning of Surkov’s words was approximately like this: we do not believe that in Russia a serious advertising market can appear in Russia that can turn television into a profitable business. Plus high political risks.
It will take place for several years, and Surkov, who had already worked already on the First Channel (then ORT), will come to me at the same social reception, reminds that conversation and admit that he was wrong then. It will take a few more years, and it turns out that Vladislav Yuryevich was unwood only partially: the political risks eventually turned out to be incredibly high, this was confirmed by the fate of Berezovsky, for which he worked at that moment, and the fate of Gusinsky.
But I am running ahead. And then, around the beginning of 1993, there was another seemingly small, but very important case. Surkov called me to have lunch at the Trend-Cose restaurant, and a common acquaintance Sergey Zverev got hooked at our table. I knew him as a press secretary Grigory Yavlinsky (Yabloko was not even in the project then), but for some time Zverev did not work with Yavlinsky, but with a certain Vladimir Gusinsky, the rising star of the young Russian business, who has a bank and all sorts of other assets. Sergey put me a business card - they say, call, if that.
One day in May
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| Igor Malashenko. November 1995 |
“If that” arose spontaneously, out of the blue, a few months later. One fine day in May 1993, Oleg Dobrodeev and I are at that time - the editor -in -chief of the information on the current First Channel, I am the host of the Result program, which by the time lasted in the same place, on the “first button”, and managed to become, as they would say now, well -promised brand) once again Tolcolly had water in a stupa about the state television about the state television about the state television Again, unbearably stuffy and "we should come up with something."
In front of me on the table lay the newspaper "Today", which has long been gone for a long time. And then she just began to go out and was very good, a brilliant journalistic team gathered in her under one roof. I heard that the same Vladimir Gusinsky, with whom our old acquaintance Sergey Zverev, is being financed. Then a pure improvisation went: let's call him, I had his business card somewhere ...
And then the amazing chain of happy accidents went. In the fifth minute of the meeting, Zverev suggested further talking with Gusinsky. Five minutes later, we were already sitting in front of him a row on the couch, and after another five minutes Gusinsky announced that to finance the production of only one program-this is not the scale, we had to make a large, ambitious project. After another half an hour, the cabinet has already kept lawyers, financiers, personnel officers, other employees to whom Gusinsky distributed tasks: we are creating a channel. The calendar was the very end of May. We went on the air in four and a half months ...
Yellow notebook
At the first meeting, Gusinsky said: you are cool guys, and you probably know about television, but you do not have experience in administrative work, and the new company needs the first person, the person who has experience with a leading work, knows how to conduct business with people in power, including in the highest areas. Do you have such a person in mind? We immediately, in chorus, called Igor Malashenko, who by that time managed to work both in the Central Committee of the CPSU and the apparatus of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, and even after the resignation of Yegor Yakovlev, he served the duties of the Channel One, which was only called differently.
So, NTV did Igor Malashenko. It is clear that with the money of Gusinsky, it is clear that with the help of Dobrodeev, with the help of the author of these lines, with the help of many other people. But neither Dobrodeev, nor even I, or even Gusinsky, would not have coped with what Igor managed to cope with. He was the first employee in the state of a new company, which was not yet called then. He then came up with the name - "NTV television company." The abbreviation "NTV" was not officially deciphered during registration. Because everyone liked the abbreviation, but everyone suggested interpreting the letter “n” differently-someone was for “independent”, someone for “new”, someone-for “ours”, etc. Malashenko proposed a witty move: and let's not decipher at all. Let everyone understand how they want. "
Gusinsky announced that to finance the production of only one program is not the scale
“For some reason, many forever remembered the“ branded ”Yellow Notepad of A4 on Malashenko-in America they call Legal Pad. At the end of each working day, he made a list of affairs for tomorrow and the next morning began to delete positions behind his position-and did not leave work until he deleted the latter. In the first year of the company Malashenko himself did everything: The business plan, the broadcasting grid created all the financial, household, personnel, legal services. Five years and very soon began to earn tens of millions of dollars a year. 
NTV could close, as often happens in Russia even with quite successful media projects, already in the second year of life. It was in March 1995. Gusinsky had been living in London for several months, in fact in forced emigration, after the president’s security service “ran into” him. The illigns' illigns convinced Yeltsin and his entourage, as if he was almost hearing a coup plans to bring the Moscow Mayor Luzhkov to power. Meanwhile, the fighting in Chechnya unfolded, and the fact that NTV, unlike state television channels, informs not only about success, but also about the failures of the “federals”, caused not only irritation - direct accusations of betrayal of state interests.
In short, one fine day, all partners came from Moscow in London to Gusinsky according to his main banking business and actually presented an ultimatum: we must get rid of NTV - either to close, or, at worst, to make it purely entertaining, no news, no “results”. Otherwise, the authorities will either ruin or select the main business-the prosperous “Bank-Bank”. After all, Malashenko got up and said about the following: “If you refuse NTV, the authorities will understand that you trembled and begin to attack you with a vengeance. NTV is actually your only protection. While you own independent television company, you can tell everyone that all your problems with the authorities only because of one thing-they want to plug the NTV company. You know, tanks have active armor? So, NTV is your "active armor." Gusinsky thought for a minute and then said: “Igor is right. We continue to work as before. ” With the performance, Malashenko extended the life of the “old” NTV for another six years. However, then his prediction came true-in 2001, the authorities took away the business from Gusinsky, not banking, but television and publishing. "
“If you refuse NTV, the authorities will understand that you trembled and will begin to attack you with a vengeance”
“And then, at the dawn of NTV, there was another person who saved the television company, a bright memory. It was Alexander Nikolaevich, who then completed his state career as head of the Federal Service on Television and Radio Broadcasting-licensing instance. About then, at the beginning of 1995, he took and issued a full-fledged license for a period of five years. After all, until the moment of NTV, until the moment of NTV. It was broadcast on the basis of the presidential decree, and this experiment could be stopped at any time by a new decree, the project of which, they already walked in the Kremlin’s offices. - The former member of the Political Bureau put the former member of the CPSU Central Committee: “It is not necessary, Viktor Stepanovich, to raise my voice on me. 
Fellow traveler
I write these notes because there are things that already belong to stories and which can and should be told so that myths do not breed. Someone should try to answer the question, which still sounds: why is another “founding father” NTV Oleg Dobroduev at one time unexpectedly left? And how could a person who created such television in the 90s, in the next decade, make television with a reverse sign, the Russia channel, where the news is carefully filtered, retouched, prepared so that, God forbid, they do not cause uncomfortable sensations in the powerful world, where the tone is set by Arkady Mamontov, Dmitry Kiselev and others?
Partly to these questions I already answered. NTV was created by Malashenko. Dobrodeev created the channel news service and was never truly fond of other channel affairs. Even when he has already become a general director. In general, periodically there was a feeling that Oleg Borisovich was burdened by his work on NTV. Starting, probably since 1997, he started a conversation about leaving. Either to Berezovsky on ORT, then to a certain high position in the apparatus of Yevgeny Primakov, when he became the prime minister. "
We lived as theater studios live during the heyday. Then the "old" NTV with his family situation ended in ten years
“And then Dobrodeev began to submit statements about leaving. At first, due to the fact that he wanted to submit news about the events around Kosovo and the NATO operation against the Milosevich regime in the then-fashioned anti-Western Pan-Slavic spirit. Then because he wanted to cover the second Chechen war like the first, only on the one hand. Then because of the nonsense-in January 2000, when Putin was already, then the presidential. There was any reason to leave, and Gusinsky did not hold it.
At one time, such a well -aimed word was widely used in Russia - "fellow traveler." So called random, temporary allies. So, from some point I-and I am not the only one-began to feel that in the NTV project, and indeed in journalism of the liberal-democratic direction Oleg Dobrodeev, a fellow traveler. Returning to state television, he, in my opinion, gained true himself.
Theater lives for 10 years
In conclusion, I recall only one story. The current general director of NTV Vladimir Kulistikov when he was his head of our information service - it was in 2000, after Dobrodeev left - in one interview, telling about the company's internal life, suddenly said a very accurate thing: “We have a studio atmosphere.” Indeed, we lived the way theater studios live during the heyday. As the art theater was probably lived at the very beginning of the journey. How “contemporary” and “Taganka” lived in their best years. But it is known that the theater lives ten years. Here is the “old” NTV with its amazing, family, studio atmosphere, when people did not want to leave work, ended in about ten years. In 2004, after the expulsion of Leonid Parfenov, the closure of the "M endeon" and-which is surprising-after the return of Kulistikov, but already as the head of the channel. A completely different story of a completely different channel began, which is definitely not for me to tell.
Photos are provided by Maria Shakhova, Igor Tabakov/Fotoimedia, Eddie OPP/Kommersant