4 stages of Russian TV broadcasting.

Hello!
Thank you for visiting my weblog, I am always glad to see you here again and again!

This entry is a brief history of Russian TV broadcasting development right from the starting and till nowadays. This information I took from “Vesty nedely” weekly news program on “Rossia” TV channel.
So, the first television center in the USSR was established only 2 years later after the end of World War II. That was the 1st stage, the beginning. Russians surprised the world. Every detail of USSR’s first television center was produced within the country by their own forces.
First television sets were small sized and contained magnifying glass. “КВН-49” served their owners for many years; unfortunately, we cannot say the same about USSR’s latest TV sets, such as “electrons”
In 1961 soviet viewers firstly witnessed life broadcast. In 1963 they could get video picture of what was happening in USA, when Kennedy was killed. The biggest television center in USSR – “Ostankino” was established in 1965. As technologies rose, soon color television appeared.
Soviet audience not just loved the anchors, they treated TV stars as their relatives, wrote letters with best wishes and also complained about too short time duration of the programs.
Now surely, television viewers are completely different to what they used to be. The speed of catching the information changed and the ability to be surprised and to sympathize decreased. “The viewers are satiated and not thankful” – says Vladimir Molchanov, second stage TV star.
The same love and special attention toward TV anchors could be also observed in the second stage of television development in USSR. I remember the minute of silence, which lasted for the whole day on all TV channels, when Vladislav Listiev was killed. People cried, somebody even got heart attack because of their regret. We cannot imagine such a thing now. It was early nineties, as I remember. That day impressed me so strong, that I still feel sadness about Listiev’s death. I remember his programs, innovative, bright and exciting. I really believe, if he did not die so early, Russian TV would be different from what they have now. It would be better.
The second stage of television development took place in the end of 80-s. It was an epoch of first analytical programs, TV entertainment. Listiev, Molchanov and Lubimov - were the brightest representatives of that TV stage.
After collapse of USSR, it was a very difficult time for all TV people. Vladimir Uhin, “diadia Volodia” from “spokoynoy nochy malishy” (uncle Volodia from “Goodnight children”), for example, had to give performances on tours all over the country instead of putting to bed children.
From my point of view, the quality of Russian television is on high level now. It produces good entertainment programs, even channels that totally devote their broadcasting time to make fun; news and analytical programs. I enjoy watching it. This is the flourishing of their television’s third stage. Which, perhaps, is about reaching its end.
Fourth stage of Russian television is coming soon – the age of digitized TV.
The end.


P.S.: I am sorry, some links are in Russian language, because I could not find biographies of russian journalisits in English and also TV chanel "Rossia" does not have English version of its site. However I believe this information will help you to understand the development of Russian television.

Bloglines

Here is URL to my blogline feeds, you can follow this link and see the sites I subscribed to:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/USERNAME

Silver age of Blogs

There is a program on Russian NTV TV channel called “zloslovie”. I find it worth to watch but it is shown very late in the night, around 2 o’clock, as far as I remember. So, I can meet it very rare. I was very happy when managed to see this program, the theme of which was devoted to the topic we discuss in our class. What I like about this program is that it is not a useless polemic between the anchor and their guests, usually popular Russian writers, journalists, photographers and other people related to media; but it turns the case you are aware of to a new angle, brings you with some aspects you have not noticed before. This is what attracts me in this late night TV discussions.
That day Avdotia Smirnova, the anchor, and her guest, as I understood he was a photographer, journalist and blog runner (I don’t know exactly, since I have not seen the beginning) tried to identify the value of life journal, blog and other internet sources of information to Russian society.
As they pointed out, television is not a good source for analytics, as it used to be several years ago, but it is a good channel for propaganda. So, people have to find some other ways to gain information they can rely on.
Have credibility of newspapers also gone down? From the guest’s point of view, the answer is no. He says there are “cream” of printed press, in capitals, as they are business centers, people read business and political outlets; in peripheries they prefer newspapers with crosswords and anecdotes. This “cream” of the press media do not look like they are going to loose their popularity and thus credibility among the population. The trust toward press, at least in Russia, has not gone down yet.
They provided very similar advantages of on-line journalism, with those we mentioned in our class. It is free unlimited space for a journalist to give a broader picture of covered issues, it is endless interaction with the audience, opportunity to remove mistakes from articles very fast, simple and forever, etc. To write a letter to the printed newspaper, it is nonsense. You won’t see your reader’s opinion unless the story in your article would not cross his/her personal or business interests.
Internet reborn mailing janre, forgotten for years with the appearance of telephone connection between people. Now writing mails is usual habit of internet users. chats, forums, blogs and other forms of on-line fun providers help to overcome the lack of association between people, but at the same Internet has been destroying life relationship.
Blogging is relatively new phenomenon in Russian internet. According to the guest of the program, nowadays we are lucky to witness the silver age of Russian blogs. They are not commercialized yet. And if there are some fake blogs in ru.net, the number of them is not that high as it is in USA or European on-line area. Because blogging is a novelty in Russia, people still enjoy writing, sharing their opinions. In the countries, where people got used to blogging, there are more readers, than writers. That is a common thing to the society: the majority always prefer to read and the minority to write. That will probably happen to Russian blogs, internet users will stop writing, taking passive position of observers. And another not very pleasant thing will definitely happen to Russian weblogs. As “zloslovie”’s guest said, commercialization is unavoidable. However, in his opinion this is not degradation, but just normal development of media.
Life journals, forums and blogs are natural results of the following scheme:

Trust toward official media - censorship -loss of readers’ trust -move of the readers to the free zone of internet -raise of blogs, life journals and forums.


However, over this free zone controlling instrument appears. This is not government, because it is busy with too big games to pay serious attention toward controlling internet. The form of controlling here is advertisement. If on TV we can easily see where ads are and where information is. We know that TV content has a big percent of propaganda, but we believe in unselfishness of information, which is given by other people, writing just to share their opinion, not to promote one’s interests. How people can determine the information which is not serving social needs, but is prepared for private interests? An important phrase was provided by the guest of the program: “If your target audience gathers somewhere, you will follow them and go to that place.” Sometimes it happens so that advertisers join a forum to promote their products or services. I think one can easily determine such forumers and avoid getting in touch with them. But it is not that easy to identify fake information in life journals and blogs. “Oh, that is our advertiser, we cannot give this negative information about them” – and as a result, objectivity of free uncontrolled zone goes down. In the opinion of the program’s guest, in this new media nothing is innovative except the technology. There would certainly be fewer writers, and commercialization together with regulation would also come to this exciting and yet undiscovered world of internet.

Fake blogs

When I was a first year baij student, my friends and family did not believe in the specialization I wanted to choose. That was public relations, or that magic word PR, something related to roomers, parties and promotion of society’s favorites. My friends told me their is no need to study for this profession, that it is something which do not require any special skills and knowledge, but having fun with your colleges and clients, associating with popular people. In common, they thought it is something dirty.
Certainly, here, in KIMEP I saw what real PR is. Just work, nothing more. Yes, this is a new profession, especially for our country, and people do not trust anything they do not understand. Few people, who do not deal with or need PR work know exactly what are its real purposes. And several years ago few people in Kazakhstan could tell what does this abbreviation mean.
Blogs are another novelty to our country. But everyday there appear more and more Kazakhstani weblogs holders.
Such phenomenon as flogs is dangerous for Kazakhstani industry of on-line media and public relations. Flogs or “fake blogs” bringing lie rather than a fresh independent opinion, damage the credibility both of PR and blogs.
I have not seen KZ flogs yet, but if it happens, that would mean that pseudo-PR moves from one channel of local media to another. From printed press and TV to on-line news sources. Paid blogs that provide untruthful opinion will cause a very big problem for catching the interest of public toward sharing important thoughts for society development through blogs.
Flogs are not real PR work, nor work of a real journalist. So, as a future media specialist I really afraid of flog spreading in kz Internet.

Cold War
Or…
Not Caribbean Sea Pirates

With every new step information technologies make in their development, it becomes easier and more attractive to produce movies, music, books, magazines and other sorts of media. New cameras, lightening opportunities allow gaining a more interesting picture, which leads the audience to a fresh perception of media product.
However, the rise of new technologies for transmitting different kinds of information brought not only positive results to the media industry. The obstacle to fair distribution and getting property for informative products is illegal copying.
Entertaining movies producers found the solution to this problem by showing films firstly in cinemas and only after that, hiring them out. CD producers cannot do it and the only thing they can do about the problem is to convince their audience in the fact that buying pirate music is not prestigious and something that damages their favorite musicians. But it seems to me this does not work very efficient. People are not willing to stop skimming kilobits of popular melodies from the internet for free or buy chip copies of CDs. Going to cinema became a mass habit in big cities. Many people would prefer going out and have fun watching a new popular film on big screen to buying pirate low quality cassette or disc for the price equal to the ticket in cinema.
Films that do not belong to the interest of masses cannot avoid being copied by pirates through the way entertaining movies are protecting themselves (Cinemas). Inserting protection programs is not effective either. In this struggle between producers’ protectors and illegal distributors the winner who uses the strongest weapon of new technologies will never be determined. On each innovative protection technology pirates will find a relative technology to unlock restricting copies programs :-/
Who or what can stop this “cold war”, then?
Oh, may be laws on intellectual property? I do not believe they can work efficiently, at least in our country. Not yet. Our media market unfortunately is not ready to protect producers. Just a little example came to my mind: Walking at the streets of Almaty one can easily find pirate DVDs, even near KIMEP :))) ... :/ Licensed DVD in a music shop, for instance, costs 2000 tenge, and at street sellers it is only 500 tenge. This is the evidence of unfair profit losses.
Everyday technologies bring more and more opportunities to both sides of the barricade. And it seems that nobody or nothing gonna stop any of this part. But let us hope some day there would be found the solution for this problem.
May it be.

The life of a journalist with new information technologies (NIT)

Coming of NIT to the journalistic world brought some significant changes into journalists’ everyday life.
Information specialist Rick Ells in his article describes how “new technologies change the pursuit of journalism” He claims that NIT has not changed the role of journalistic work, but it actually changed the way journalist accomplishes his assignments. According to this article, someone may conclude that life of nowadays’ journalist is easier than it was before the appearance of NIT. During seventies and eighties reporters had to have “considerable” computer skills to decode and interpret raw data that was supplied by agencies only on computer tapes. Now the majority of needed data is available to anyone online. But NIT in fact did not make a journalist’s life easier. Though the access to official information collection became easier, another challenge appeared.
This challenge is the surplus and even excess of information. World wide web actually is cluttered with useless information. Therefore modern journalist should be aware of some helpful programs, which allow him to search for the relevant information efficient. One of such assistants is RSS – “Really simple syndication” – format used by news sites and weblogs for distributing content. CyberJournalist.net publisher Pointer Online web site provides a friendly explanation on what does RSS mean and how to use it. Mr. Dube says:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“RSS will save you time and make your Web surfing much more efficient. Rather than tediously checking dozens of Web sites for new information, RSS enables you to go to one place and find all the latest content from each of those sites. RSS makes it easy to read lots of sites -- from weblogs to major media — in very little time.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
However journalist use NIT not only to gain data for his works. Up-to-date technologies make a journalist be more careful about his articles. Posting the news stories online permits more people to see it and comment on it. That means many people can show their opinion about the covered theme that, perhaps, not always support the statements of the author. That is why journalist should know the subject on which he writes very well and research taken field with extreme thoroughness. This would help him to determine which of the public comments are appropriate and which comments are just nonsense. But in fact according to Brivings Group research called “The use of Internet by American newspapers” only 19 percent of 100 top newspapers of America allow to comment on their works. As it was mentioned by blog is one of modern duties of a reporter to attract the audience for the newspaper he works in. Blog, being a new duty, also is a new advantage, that mass media specialists of the past did not have. Blog gives unlimited space to discuss hot issues, themes that are not of newspaper’s priorities, but still important to raise and see the reaction of the readers without mediators.
Thus, with appearance of New Information Technologies, the life of a journalist became easier, but at the same time more complicated.

Freedom of the Press in USA

Hello!

today I'd like to make an entry about freedom of press in USA - the country that is recognized as a symbol of democracy and liberty.

Dean Walter, a journalist from USA, who came to our International Relations and journalism class on Wednesday, September 27, gave a speech on freedom of the press in his country.
But before giving an overview of his speech, it would be better to define what freedom of the press is. On-line encyclopedia called “Wikipedia” says “freedom of the press is the guarantee by a government of free public press for its citizens and their associations, extended to members of news gathering organizations, and their published reporting. It also extends to news gathering, and processes involved in obtaining information for public distribution”. Web site named “About the USA” says American press freedom was “included among the basic human rights protected in the new nation's Bill of Rights”. The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…" That protection from control by the federal government meant that “anyone rich or poor, and regardless of political or religious beliefs could generally publish whatever he or she wished” – explains the website. And On the other hand, “defamation, obscenity and publication of national-security secrets have been generally determined not eligible for protection under the First Amendment”.

The first statement of Walter Dean’s speech was on significant and fundamental changes in media and society relationships. Since the time new information technologies allowed high spread of media messages, the number of newspapers', television's and local news' auditorium got a stable decrease. According to Walter Dean’s words one of the reasons for this decline is that people want “easier life”. They want entertainment more than hard news. Another reason he gave is that people have less time even to sleep because of expansions of big cities. So, they do not have an opportunity to stay at home to watch, for instance, evening news on TV; however people can easily get all breaking news every time they want through other media channels (radio in a car, newspaper during coffee, web sites in office). As a consequence of that decrease in auditorium number, there was also a decline in number of reporters in CBS, where the guest speaker has worked for 14 years. Since early 90-s till our days there was a decline in that number from 2000 reporters to 90. This is an example of directly proportional dependence of press (and media in general) from its audience.
The next point of his speech was the identification of a journalist’s role in the society. “Being a really journalist, you are a patriot” – said Walter Dean. And a real journalist must put questions. For example, ask policy makers how do they think there programs would work in order to protect them from fail. Dean Walter sees the purpose of journalism – “to give people the information the need to make good decisions about their life, work and government.”
Another his statement was about US paranoia, which varies at different times. In 1860-s it was paranoia of civil war, in 1990-s paranoia of immigration, and nowadays it is paranoia of terrorism. This paranoia belongs not only to American society, but also to journalists. It causes from USA’s geographical position (isolation and neighbors) and biases (democracy is the best system, truth, piece).
Also in his speech, he mentions that more and more prime time is given to entertaining programs and this opinion is shared in movie of George Clooney “Good night and good luck”. In the film, CBS journalist speaking from the tribune said that TV is just a stupid box with lights and lines in it and nothing else, if the only purpose of it is to entertain. Also journalists there are named as “troop of jackals”, which show unpleasant attitude of those policy makers toward truth seekers.
So, looking at all Walter Dean’s statements during his speech in the class, looking at what was said in the film and what is written in the Internet about press freedom in USA, it could be concluded that in the following. Freedom of US press is limited by keeping national-security secrets, interests of the audience and businesses, US paranoia and unwillingness of governors to release the whole truth.