In one day, on January 29, Dozhd was deprived of access to more than half of its subscribers. The channel was disconnected from broadcasting by the operators Akado, Er-Telecom, NTV-Plus and, at the last moment, the state-owned Rostelecom . The reason for the severance of relations was a poll about the siege of Leningrad, which the channel conducted a couple of days earlier. "Was it necessary to surrender Leningrad to save hundreds of thousands of lives?" Dozhd asked its viewers. The fact that the channel quickly removed the controversial poll and immediately apologized did not save the situation - the scandal quickly gained momentum, and the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office will now check whether the channel crossed the line of what is permissible. According to the "private opinion" of the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov, it definitely did.

The TV remote with its many buttons is a physical embodiment of freedom of choice. I press "one" and watch Channel One, I press "four" and there it is, TNT. I watch whatever I want. Only in the last couple of days we have been cynically reminded that on TV we watch not what we want, but what is shown to us. And they don't want to show us the Dozhd channel anymore.

After thinking for a couple of days, Roskomnadzor decided that Dozhd had violated the law "On Mass Media" in terms of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens, namely veterans of the Great Patriotic War, but did not issue a warning to the channel. Two such warnings are enough, and the service can go to court to revoke the media registration certificate. Until now, it seemed that the surest way for the authorities to stop the work of the media was to revoke the registration certificate through the court. The Rosbalt agency, let me remind you, received two warnings in one day.

Now we know how the business of the most stubborn media outlet can be destroyed literally in one day, without any trial or official government intervention, by a call from above. The weak point of any TV channel is access to the viewer. When the state controls all cables and satellites in the country (and in fact it does), then, given a plausible pretext, it will use this administrative resource to the fullest extent. And it doesn't matter what words about denigrating the glorious pages of Russian history the operators used to explain the break in relations with Dozhd. It is extremely difficult to believe in the sincerity of such indignation.

Thing of the Week: TV Remote