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RTR CEO left the channel

Alexander Akopov will no longer head the RTR channel from March 4. He is leaving the post of deputy chairman of the VGTRK holding and general director of the RTR television channel, which he has held since August 1998. This was stated by the chairman of the VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev. According to him, Mr. Akopov will begin implementing his own non-political, entertainment television project, although no longer connected with RTR.

This resignation is the most significant personnel change on state television since Oleg Dobrodeev came to power at VGTRK and RTR in January 2000. Alexander Akopov was the most influential functionary at RTR who was not part of Mr. Dobrodeev's team. Mr. Akopov's resignation gives the chairman of VGTRK the opportunity to build state television, focusing only on his own ideas and tastes. Moreover, the duties of Mr. Akopov will be performed by one of Mr. Dobrodeev’s nominees, Anton Zlatopolsky, who currently holds the post of first deputy chairman of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.

A new CEO will be appointed after two months. The position of chief producer remains vacant, whose candidacy, according to Oleg Dobrodeev, will be sought not only on the RTR channel.

Substantive changes are also coming to RTR. For many years, Alexander Akopov determined the strategy of RTR’s artistic and entertainment broadcasting, a large volume of which was occupied by television series, as well as programs such as “My Family” and “Full House”. At the moment, according to Oleg Dobrodeev, the development of advertising broadcasting on the channel is problematic. A number of entertainment programs will remain - in particular “Town”, as well as projects by Mikhail Zadornov and Mikhail Zhvanetsky, but in general the program schedule will undergo changes. Mr. Dobrodeev said that after the news broadcasts at 14.00 and 17.00 it is planned to add regional information programs. The channel plans to enrich Moscow broadcasting with the so-called Moscow block of programs, which will be broadcast daily from 17.30 to 19.00.

In addition, Oleg Dobrodeev did not rule out that in the near future the number of sports programs, and in particular football reports, may increase on RTR, but this depends on the results of negotiations with the Russian Football League.

Changes will occur not only in the broadcast network itself. In the next one and a half or two months, the company will occupy a new building on the 5th street of Yamskoye Pole, where all organizational and information structures of RTR, one way or another related to the airwaves, will be located. Thus, only filming pavilions will remain in the complex on Shabolovka.

Maxim BALUTENKO