Regular television broadcasting began in Moscow in 1939, although the service was interrupted for the duration of World War II (1941–45). Broadcasting was always given a high priority by the Soviet authorities, and television expanded rapidly in the postwar years, so that by the late 1970s there were two general channels that could be received over most of the country and two other channels (one local and one educational) in certain large cities. There were also television stations in the constituent republics and studios in most large cities. Apart from a gradual extension of the coverage of the two national channels until the first, at least, could be received in virtually the whole of the country, this situation remained little changed until 1991. Because of its size, the Soviet Union was a pioneer of satellite transmission: by the mid-1980s both national channels were broadcast in four time-shifted variants to eastern parts of the country, while the first channel was among the earliest television programs to be made available worldwide. Regular color transmissions began in 1967, using the SECAM system.

Administratively, television was the responsibility of the All-Union Committee for Television and Radio (generally known as Gosteleradio), the chairman of which was a member of the Council of Ministers and of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. Equivalent committees existed in the constituent republics, with the exception, owing to a quirk of the system, of Russia itself. Only in May 1991, after sustained pressure from the Russian Parliament, did a separate Russian organization start its own television transmissions; its programs, broadcast for six hours per day on the second channel, were in the summer of that year a focus of opposition to President Mikhail Gorbachev. Broadcasting was financed out of the state budget, the receiving license having been replaced in 1962 by a notional addition to the retail price of television sets.

The social, political, and economic upheavals that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet system have led to major changes in Russian television. The period since 1991 has been characterized by a rapid growth of commercialization and a continuing debate concerning the roles of both the state and private businesses in owning, financing, and controlling the content of the electronic media. There has also been continuous disagreement between the executive and legislative branches of power over which of them should exercise control over broadcasting. Up to now, this question has invariably been resolved in favor of the former, and the entire structure of Russian television has in effect been put into place by a series of presidential decrees.

As in most of Europe, Russian television is provided by a combination of publicly and privately owned organizations. The All-Russian State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK), founded in 1991 and wholly owned by the state, operates two channels: RTR (general interest) and Kul’tura (more “highbrow”). A second state company, Ostankino, which was created out of the former Gosteleradio when the Soviet Union disintegrated, was abolished in 1995. Its functions were taken over by Obshchestvennoe rossiiskoe televidenie (Russian Public Television, known as ORT), owned 51 percent by the state and 49 percent by private interests. ORT is largely a commissioning company. Publicly owned broadcasting organizations continue to exist in each of the regions of Russia; one of these, TV-Tsentr, mostly owned and financed by the Moscow city government, uses franchising arrangements to have its programs broadcast in other large cities. In the private sector, there is one national company, NTV, while another, TV-6, is available in many large cities, thanks to franchising agreements; both NTV and TV-6 commenced operations in 1993. There are also several hundred local stations, and cable television exists in many cities. Most national channels have international versions, aimed principally at Russian-speaking audiences in Israel.

The changes since 1991 have had an equally profound effect on programs and their content. In Soviet times, television was first and foremost an instrument of propaganda, serving the interests of party and state, and this purpose was reflected in all news bulletins and political programs. The main evening news program, Vremia (Time), was shown simultaneously on all channels and often ran far beyond its allotted 40 minutes (a cavalier attitude toward the published schedules has been a characteristic of both Soviet and Russian television). All programs were in effect, if not formally, subject to censorship, and caution usually prevailed: the popular student cabaret KVN was taken off the air in the 1971 for being too daring, and a high proportion of the nonpolitical programs consisted of high culture (opera, ballet, or classical drama), films made for the Soviet cinema, and sport, all of which could be guaranteed in advance to be inoffensive.

Because of television’s importance as a means of propaganda, the effects of glasnost were felt more slowly in that medium than in the print media. By the late 1980s, however, a certain liberalization could be discerned: KVN returned to the screens, and previously taboo topics began to be discussed in programs such as Vzgliad (View) and Do i posle polunochi (Before and After Midnight). These were followed by a range of lively and innovative productions originated by the semi-independent production company ATV, as well as by attempts to liven up news presentation. However, as late as the 1990–91 season, all of these programs were liable to suffer cuts imposed by the censors or even to disappear altogether; the suspension of Vzgliad in January 1991 was a particular cause célèbre. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that the removal of all restrictions after the collapse of the August 1991 putsch led to a brief flowering of creative talent (and the emergence of long-forbidden programs) that may prove to have been something of a “golden age” for Russian television.

The 1990s and 2000s have witnessed a gradual Westernization of Russian television with the appearance of genres hitherto eschewed. Among these are game shows, such as Pole chudes (Field of Miracles), which is based on Wheel of Fortune and which is one of Ostankino/ORT’s most popular programs; more recently, the Russian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has attracted many viewers. Other newly adopted genres include talk shows, such as Tema (Theme) and My (We), which likewise have clear ancestral links with their American counterparts, and soap operas. These are almost invariably imported from the United States or Latin America; home-grown versions have been few in number and short-lived. One genre to which Russian television has remained immune is situation comedy, although in the area of satire it is worth mentioning NTV’s Kukly (Puppets), which uses the format of the British program Spitting Image and which has occasionally succeeded in annoying the authorities. Films made in the United States and other Western countries are now widely shown, although since the mid-1990s, presumably in response to complaints from viewers, there has been a marked increase in the number of Russian/Soviet films being broadcast. There is a limited amount of religious broadcasting, mostly in connection with festivals of the Russian Orthodox Church. Literature, classical music, and serious drama, which at one time had almost totally disappeared from the screens, have regained a tenuous foothold on the Kul’tura channel.

This Westernization has by no means met with universal approval, although it is not only a reaction to Soviet isolationism but also a response to commercial pressures. The financing of Russian television is heavily opaque, but it may be assumed that the state makes a modest contribution to the running costs of VGTRK, though not to ORT. This means that all channels except Kul’tura are now heavily dependent on advertising, and with the relationship between audience ratings and the prices charged for advertising becoming as sophisticated as in the West, there is a requirement to show programs that will attract viewers. Advertising is lightly regulated and takes many forms, including spots between and during programs and sponsorship. It tends to be unpopular, partly because of the unfamiliar intrusiveness (the amount of advertising is much greater than in most European countries), but also because in the early days a high proportion of the ads were either for foreign goods not widely available or (especially from 1992 to 1994) for disreputable financial institutions that subsequently collapsed. Nevertheless, while some transnational companies have preferred to recycle advertisements previously used in their older markets, the best Russian-produced examples of the form will bear comparison to anything shown in the West. The rapid growth of advertising has led to widespread allegations of corruption, and the murkier side of Russian television received prominence in March 1995 with the still unsolved murder of Vladislav List’ev, originator and presenter of several popular programs and director-general-designate of ORT. In some cases additional financial support for television may come from owners or patrons. However, the costs of running the national channels have for some years exceeded income, and all the main channels, whether public or private, are heavily in debt. In 2001, the Duma approved a law banning foreign citizens or companies from owning more than 50 percent of a national television company; given the financial and political uncertainties, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been little or no foreign investment in Russian television.

Commercial pressures have not, however, entirely succeeded in supplanting political pressures, although until recently the latter have been incomparably more subtle than in Soviet times. The mass media under Boris Yeltsin were by historical standards surprisingly free and pluralistic, partly because the president was himself relaxed about criticism, but partly because the ramshackle nature of the state made effective control problematic. Nevertheless, in both areas the long-established Soviet practice of “telephone law” (whereby a person in power uses that instrument to convey his or her wishes/instructions) continued to prevail, and Ostankino and its successor ORT acquired a reputation for being “pro-presidential,” but this was principally because of the perceived slant of their news coverage. At the same time, however, certain programs produced for these channels by independent production companies were accused, somewhat contradictorily, of giving opponents of the president too much air time, and it is generally considered that the demagogic nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovskii largely owes his political career to television. In the 1996 presidential election, self-interest and political pressure ensured that all television channels supported the re-election of Yeltsin; NTV was rewarded for its support by significant improvements to the terms of its license, albeit at some cost to its reputation for independence and lack of bias.

The period after 1996 saw the growth of informal power networks involving politicians and businessmen and the appearance of “oligarchic television,” where channels were controlled by tycoons with political ambitions. In particular, ORT was controlled by Boris Berezovskii, its main financier, while NTV was run by Vladimir Gusinskii, alternately Berezovskii’s ally and rival. During the 1999/2000 elections, the two channels were on opposite sides: ORT supported Vladimir Putin and his allies; NTV displayed a demonstrative coolness toward the future president. Campaigning methods were remarkably robust, and this period saw the emergence of the phenomenon of the “telekiller,” presenters of news-analysis programs (notably NTV’s Sergei Dorenko), who indulged in vicious character assassinations of their patrons’ opponents.

With Putin safely elected, a reckoning followed, the results of which were not entirely predictable. If the series of legal and extralegal measures taken against NTV and Gusinskii had a certain obvious logic, the easing-out of Berezovskii was more surprising. The latter sold, or was made to sell his shares, in ORT, and in April 2001 NTV came under the effective control of Gazprom, the partly state-owned gas monopoly, which had previously been a minority shareholder in NTV. The ostensible reason for the takeover was the inability of NTV to repay its debts, but it seems clear that the incident was engineered by the presidential administration to reign in an increasingly recalcitrant broadcaster. The events of 2000–01 were carried out with a curious mixture of scrupulously observed legal procedures and naked blackmail. The result has not been a re-Sovietization of Russian television, but a certain success in resetting the boundaries of pluralism rather more narrowly than in Yeltsin’s time.

Russian television operates in a climate where the structures of a civil society have been only partially created and where politics in terms of being the determining factor both in interchannel rivalry and in viewer affections plays a role similar to that played by association football in western Europe. In the absence of a clear legal framework and of an agreed definition of “public service broadcasting,” commercial pressures may offer the best available guarantees of maintaining some degree of freedom of speech. With the problems and opportunities associated with digitization still destined to have a significant impact, the creation of a stable and financially secure structure of broadly based channels aimed at a national audience is likely to remain the main issue in Russian television in the near future