1992–1994. Management disagreements and financial problems
The main problem of the activities of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Ostankino was the "spread" of advertising among thematic studios, which began during the existence of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.[17][18][19][20] In 1990–1991, three thematic studios received the status of legal entities, including the Experiment studio, which was the main customer for the production of television programs at JSC VID Television Company.[21] At the beginning of 1992, instead of almost all other thematic main editorial offices of Central Television, thematic studios of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Ostankino were created;[22][23] for example, ITA had its own advertising department.[24] Some of the studios paid private television organizations for the programs produced to their order with their advertising time.[25][26] The Main Advertising and Commercial Directorate itself was created only in May 1993;[27] the Ostankino Advertising Agency, which operated before that, only placed advertising between programs.
In the summer of 1992, Eduard Sagalaev created MNVK, which took over the evening of 6 TVK in Moscow[28] (from 1993 to 1994, economic and educational programs of the Severnaya Korona television company were broadcast on Channel 6 in the morning and afternoon). Instead of Eduard Sagalaev, Igor Malashenko, who had previously been its political director, became the general director of the television and radio company.[29]
In the fall of 1992, Russian businessmen founded the OITV company in Israel, which since the fall of 1993 has been retransmitting the signal of one of the belt versions of 1st channel Ostankino abroad. In particular, such a version of the channel was broadcast in Israel itself, in early February 1994 in Transnistria, for some time in Ukraine, and from the beginning of 1994 in some cities in the European part of Russia. Israeli Russian- and English-language advertising was broadcast on Ostankino International Television, sometimes blocking the broadcasts. The exact fate of OITV is unknown: presumably, it stopped broadcasting after the launch of ORT, in April–May 1995.
On October 4, 1992, the broadcast of George Lucas's film Star Wars was removed from the air with the wording "pirated film purchased for showing without film and video rights".[30] This was the first removal from the air on domestic television. The space saga was shown on Channel One only 13 years later, in 2005, with stereo sound.[31][32]
On November 24, 1992, Yegor Yakovlev was dismissed due to the showing of a film about the war between Ingushetia and North Ossetia–Alania. On January 11, 1993, Vyacheslav Bragin was appointed Chairman of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company "Ostankino". Due to disagreements over the methods of managing the television and radio company, Igor Malashenko left the post of General Director, and his place was taken by Oleg Slabynko.[33][34][35]
Under the leadership of Bragin and Slabynko, the channel began to work more often in the interests of Boris Yeltsin, while state censorship began to strengthen. ITA editor-in-chief Oleg Dobrodeev and host of the Itogi program Yevgeny Kiselyov considered it impossible to work under the current conditions and, together with Igor Malashenko and businessman Vladimir Gusinsky, founded the NTV television company, which took over production of the Itogi program.
From the fall of 1993 to the spring of 1994, Ostankino experienced a large outflow of ITA journalists and employees of some other departments, who transferred to the staff of NTV Television Company LLC. Along with Dobrodeyev and Kiselyov, news anchors Tatyana Mitkova and Mikhail Osokin, who became anchors of the news program Segodnya, ITA journalists Vladimir Luskanov, Irina Zaitseva, Vladimir Lensky, Alexander Khabarov, Alexander Gerasimov (journalist), Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr., Marianna Maksimovskaya, Boris Koltsov, Mikhail Svetlichny, Andrei Cherkasov and Alexander Zarayelyan, some sports commentators, such as Evgeny Mayorov, and some of the staff of the film program studio also moved to NTV. At the same time, many employees of the television and radio company began to leave for the new channel TV-6, created by the former head of the television and radio company Eduard Sagalaev.
On October 3, 1993, during the end of the football match "Rotor" - "Spartak" at 19:26 Moscow time, due to the armed siege of the RGTRK "Ostankino", by order of Vyacheslav Bragin the broadcast of the 1st and 4th channels, Ostankino International Television, as well as TV-6 and MTK, which are not part of the television and radio company, was interrupted, which was opposed by Yevgeny Kiselyov. After this, only Channel Five and RTR remained on the air, which broadcast Vesti every half hour, and also retransmitted a live CNN broadcast. On October 4 at 6:30 the broadcast was resumed, and footage of the siege was shown on Teleutra, as well as a live broadcast of the storming of the White House. After these events, Vyacheslav Bragin demanded that security be strengthened at the buildings of the television and radio company's editorial offices and studios.
On December 16, 1993, Vyacheslav Bragin resigned from the post of chairman of the Ostankino State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. This position was initially offered to Vladimir Mukusev, but due to his conflict with the television company's staff, this candidacy was withdrawn. This position was also offered to Yevgeny Kiselyov, but he refused. Alexander Yakovlev was appointed chairman, and Oleg Tochilin was appointed editor-in-chief of the Information Television Agency.
By February 1994, Ostankino State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company had accumulated debt to state-owned communications enterprises: as of January 1, 1996, they amounted to 412 billion rubles. At the same time, according to the deputy chairman of Ostankino State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Gennady Shepitko, there was a government order from December 22, 1993, which instructed the Ministry of Finance to liquidate the debt (ultimately, it was never implemented), which caused a strike by communications workers on February 10, 1994, threatening to stop broadcasting programs (except for news) of both broadcasting organizations in 45 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The employees of Ostankino State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company saw the solution in the creation of trading houses controlled by the television and radio company. Since October 1992, the commercial Russian-language television channel Orsent TV has been broadcasting on the frequencies of the Ostankino 1st Channel in Estonia at night, after the channel's broadcasts have ended. In 1993–1994, this channel's broadcasts were conducted from 5 to 6 p.m., thus, the broadcasts of Ostankino in Estonia at this time were overlapped by Orsent TV programs. A similar restriction on the channel's broadcasts took place in Lithuania: in the summer of 1994, due to the refusal of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Ostankino to pay for its broadcasts in Lithuania, local authorities gave the frequency of 1st channel Ostankino to the private channel LitPollinter TV. According to the concluded agreement, the channel could broadcast on the air of LitPollinter TV for only a few hours. On February 6, 1995, the LitPollinter TV channel stopped broadcasting due to financial problems, and the 1st Ostankino Channel in Lithuania began broadcasting in pure form again (however, on April 1 it was replaced by ORT, and on May 5 ORT transferred the frequency to the LNK channel).
