Translated material
"Country and World" on the brink
This program has been broadcast on NTV since February of this year from Monday to Thursday at 22.00. Its actual creator and leader is Leonid Parfenov, and the program is hosted alternately by two pairs of presenters - Yulia Bordovskikh with Anton Khrekov and Aset Vatsueva with Alexey Pivovarov.
The decision to close the program caused bewilderment among one part and confusion among another part of the NTV information service staff. According to the newspaper, Mr. Gerasimov’s decision was not liked not only by Leonid Parfenov, but also by the editor-in-chief of the NTV information broadcasting directorate Tatyana Mitkova and Mikhail Osokin, who at a reception with NTV General Director Nikolai Senkevich demanded that “Country and the World” be returned to the channel’s airwaves. Otherwise, they threatened to leave the channel. Ultimately, Nikolai Senkevich decided to leave “Country and World” in the program schedule.
Sources of the Vremya Novostey newspaper associate the reasons for such a fierce struggle around the information block with the very difficult relationship between Leonid Parfenov and Alexander Gerasimov, who seeks to subordinate the work of all information programs on the channel. The second hypothesis is related to the arrival at the end of June of Mikhail Osokin at NTV, who returned with his team in June after the TVS channel was turned off. It was for his release of the “Today” program, according to the newspaper “Vremya Novostey”, that it was supposed to clear space on the evening news broadcast of NTV.
The situation around the Country and World program shows that both the NTV channel and its information service are still going through difficult times. For example, Natalya Zabuzova, presenter of the morning and afternoon broadcasts of Segodnya, left the channel and went to work for the Vesti program. An order has already been signed to close Savvik Shuster’s weekly program “Influence.” It is possible that in the new television season its place will be taken by the political project of Vladimir Solovyov, who came to NTV from the TVS channel. The head of NTV’s public relations service, Grigory Simanovich, on Friday denied information that the “Country and World” program would be closed, saying that “next week “Country and World” will actually go on vacation.” “But this will be an ordinary vacation, which is traditional for any program. At the beginning of the new season, “Country and World” will appear on the air again,” he emphasized. However, then the press service slightly changed its wording, stating that “Country and the World” “is and will be aired on NTV at normal times.” “Moreover, there are no plans for a vacation for the creative team at all,” NTV emphasized in its statement.