Three letters

Mtv , feed me

“We are like at a wedding here,” said Yana Churikov, the director of the MTV restart, clinging her eyes to a table forced by plates with salads and cheesecakes. The journalists who gathered to the press brob on the occasion of the return of MTV to Russia reacted sluggishly: only everyone sat in places, and it was not clear what to do-either to grab the handles, or for the forks. The Churikova Remarke, the general director of Viacom International, smiled barely noticeably Elena Balmont, who was sitting with her at the head of the table on the side - in the place of the groom. She, like Churikova, was at a festive event in a strict black dress. An awkward pause hung.

Then the pauses disappeared - Yana Churikova began to show reporters on the plasma presentation of the new MTV , who was going to become the main entertainment media for Russian youth, and briskly state the justifications of this calculation. Social -exploration data were sprinkled (10 million teenagers and 23 million young people from 20 to 29 years old - a potential channel audience) and marketing terms (unique Viacom content, cross -platform television, be “glolla = Global + Lala” - this is the Viacom Content).

The new MTV will be “normal”, Yana Churikova emphasized several times. It will be 35% of music on it (video clips in the early morning and many recording recording records), the remaining 65% of the airtime-selected taking into account the tastes of the Russian audience, the American show, of which the Catfish Internet dating director, translated as “Loneliness on the Web”, especially identified. Then the journalists were launched by a frantic cut from these same shows: under the eerie remix of A-ha songs on plasma, juicy paintings from the life of American teenagers. At this place, it became finally clear that the black dresses in which the first persons came were for a reason. The presentation of the new MTV turned out to be a cap of channel, the appearance of which in Russia on September 27, 1998 was an event for the current 30-year-olds. The new “normal” MTV with that old one who has not reached a couple of months before its 15th anniversary is connected only by Yana Churikov, as well as Bivis and Batthead, the animated series about which will be shown from nostalgic reasons after 23:00. Although these two cormorants in Metallica and AC/DC T -shirts, as the director of the restart noted, "definitely not the heroes of this era."

The first on the moon

The old MTV in many ways determined the era of 30-year-olds who came to his peers, their language and consciousness. The American Music Television started on Saturday, August 1, 1981, as an experimental cable channel dedicated to rock music-the first years he was not shown in New York, he was guided by the depths of the United States, where the television signal reached the cable. MTV broadcasting began with the documentary chronicle of the launch of Apollo 11 and the landing of American astronauts on the moon, turned into a screensaver with a logo worn on T -shirt Victor Tsoi. Then they gave a video clip Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star” . This could be seen in the foresight of the channel producers-the prediction that in the 1980s and 1990s, MTV will make a video clip invented in the sixties and a couple of decades, laid idle, the center of the multimillion-dollar industry and the main way of promoting artists. But, as is known from the memoirs of the first widers, there was a different clip at the site of the Buggles clip - the start was not smooth, and the initial script was broken.

As the Apollo 11 crew, the MTV creative team went into the unknown, and therefore they managed to get into history. They shot at random, but managed to get into the apple. MTV is the first musical, the first global niche, the first television channel, whose name was assigned to a whole generation . MTV gave us Widershev, shooting a “swinging” camera, morning shows with music and animation screensavers (“inter -programs”), Michael Jackson and Madonna, Bivis and Battheed, Video Music Awards , Acoustic concerts of UNPLGged , Voice or Lost, directors of spike, spike directors, spike directors Jones, Michel Gondri and David Fincher. The side effect of the megadosis of pop culture, with which the channel scored the viewer’s brain, was the “clip consciousness” and the attention deficit syndrome, progressing every decade.

In the two thousandth number of musical videos on the International MTV , every year it began to decrease-it was replaced by reality shows and series. In the endless struggle for the expansion and rejuvenation of the audience, the clips have lost their effectiveness. At the same time, another medium gained his strength, which allowed people who are interested in music instantly gain access to any video that has ever been shot. The YouTube and other video services launched at the beginning of 2005 were replaced by the zero MTV generation, where to order a video, it was necessary to get through to the studio or send SMS . The era is over, the plot was repeated: the Internet killed a video star.

“Here, we are MTV . Well, you understand, old man! "

MTV has its own story in Russia, which began almost the same as the American one, but, according to its participants, had a typical local finale. When, in the studio of the show “Evening Urgant”, Ivan Urgant gathered his former colleagues, famous widers of the first wave, Tutt Larsen, Alexander Anatolyevich, Vasily Strelnikov, Jan Churikov and Anton Komolov, and asked: “What did you experience when MTV closed?” - Larsen said without abysses: "Yes, he had long been a corpse and even smelled." According to many viewers, channel officers who remained working until the last days, and, for example, Vasily Strelnikov, the Russian MTV ended in 2002.

The emergence of MTV , made by media producer Boris Zosimov based on his own Muzkanal Biz-TV for American money, for young people became the beginning of the new time. Many still remember the September Moscow of the 98th, abundantly pasted in an advertising poster, which shows an ear with a valetip earring. Previously, for video cassettes with clips decorated with these three letters, it was necessary to ride a hump, now it was enough to turn on the night broadcast of the Telexpo decimeter television channel, and you could watch clips all night. The world youth culture was in one click on the button of the remote control - what is a “click”, then few knew.

An awkward pause hung.

Employees of the MTV first convocation received salaries of $ 200-300, but worked on frantic enthusiasm, understanding their activities as a missionary one. “Work on MTV was for us all a wild holiday. We all perceived this not as a kind of career growth, but as gaining a new way of life, a new ideology, ”recalls Tutta Larsen. “It was a holiday channel,” the screenwriter Denis Khoreshko echoes her, who came to MTV to launch the Board Morning show in 1999. - Moreover, both outside and inside. I did not meet such a channel before or after. The channel was a house, and the team was a family. They all lived in this house is almost unlimited - in the office in Shchipkovsky Lane. And all people were bright, each with their own chip. Moreover, all were on the same wavelength, no matter what kind of music they listened. ”

Employees of the Russian MTV reproduced a recipe that brought success to their senior fellow. Firstly, this is the music that really interested the young generation, Yana Churikova on the air of the Urgant show recalled the fly, where the musical content of the broadcast was discussed and where all those around him were drawn up to the cleaners. Secondly, the television channel conducted a constant and frank dialogue with the viewer-on this informal communication, the latest rating of the channel were built, which were produced for pennies and on the technique outdated even at that time.

At the same time, this recipe was reproduced intuitively - the connection with the “parental” MTV was carried out twice a year, during direct broadcasts of VMA and EMA ceremonies. The American office only sent Video clips to Moscow and interderogram animation on betakams. The first “Production Baybls” and “Brendbooks”, the channel employees saw only in 2002, when the oldest employees began to quit.

At this place, it became finally clear that the black dresses in which the first persons came were for a reason.

“No one set the tasks,” recalls Denis Khoreshko. - When I got a job on the channel, the producers in the spirit of “Here we are, we are MTV . Well, you understand, old man!” And I understood. In the “Bodrom morning” we did what we wanted, up to the point that we mocked the authorities. If there were still some frames in the morning show-for example, the installation is not to talk about anything sad, about death and tragedies, then Vasya Strelnikov in night programs had very hard humor-on the verge of a foul. Nobody resorted to us with gleamed eyes - that you are impossible! The team lived in anarchist mode. Everyone understood that MTV was a reckless channel, from which you could expect anything. ”

In zero sincerity, the messianic fuse and live experiments were defeated by great money. Control over the content from the hands of bright enthusiasts passed into the hands of strong business executives. “The channel began to capitalize and earn good money with minimal investments,” says Khoreshko. -I remember that already in 2000 we sat on the air of a “peppy morning” with a chup-chups in the mouth, on our feet-Camelot sneakers, under the booty-some other sponsorship product. Programs began to be clogged with Product PlaCement 'Ohm. Management began to intensify - American managers came, and this was the beginning of the end. ”

In 2002, MTV will leave its CEO Boris Zosimov, selling his share of Viacom . The channel employees will conclude that the Americans decided to push Boris Guryevich away from the high income source, and write a collective letter in defense of their favorite boss. The letter will not change anything. The day after the generous dump party arranged by Zosimov in the club, the new President Linda Jensen will wait in the MTV office, who will inform with a charming accent that now everything will be in a new way. The channel will reduce the volume of production of its own programs and sharply increase the number of Russian clips on the air - supposedly because the viewer wants to hear songs in his native language. This is a version of media managers accustomed to talking in the language of numbers. Accustomed to appeal to the emotions of the audience Denis Khoreshko, who worked on MTV Until 2011, he believes that MTV failed when he was headed by an American manager. “Linda Jensen did not take into account the tough Asian situation in which our show business is located,” Khoreshko explains. -Around her, our producers immediately began to drive, and the level of secondary-third Russian popes on the air increased incredibly. MTV could no longer get out of this pit. ”

They shot at random, but managed to get into the apple.

In pursuit of the All -Russian audience, MTV will lose Moscow. “After the departure of Boris Zosimov with the MTV , it became impossible to watch-it is monstrous,” the correspondent of the Magazine of the post of posters Elena Jegereva will attack in 2002 on the new program director of the Canal Ilya Bachurina. In this replica, the bitterness and rage of a viewer who lost a close comrade and interesting interlocutor rings. Ilya Bachurin will try to make excuses first in an interview, then with a television, but to no avail.

The Russian MTV model of 1998 was a television channel that Russian youth did not see equal to the degree of honesty and frankness of the dialogue-and it seems that they would not see. Starting again, after 15 years, MTV , which from October 1 enters the packages of satellite TV, does not set such tasks. So far, everything that he can offer 10 million adolescents and 23 million aged 20 to 29 years is loneliness on the network.