RUSSIAN MEDIA TODAYPART 3: 2000’S – GROWTH, DUSK & DOWN

Vasily Gatov

NEW WORLD AND OLD MEDIA

Russia in 00’s as a country and a society is vastly different from what was USSR and 90’s Russia: decay and depression are substituted with oil and gas funded development, tighter state and more aggressive politics usually associated with the name of Vladimir Putin, 2nd President of Russia

Russian media space is no different from other social and economic institutions – better financial conditions, growing demand, fruitful advertising and stability lead to significant development and progress in media

Second half of 00’s brings a power of Internet-based media, constituting the end of Guttenbergh’s Era even in Russia

Current state of the media in Russia – with some local specifics – is quite similar to the developed countries

TELEVISION IS EVERYTHING

After InfoWars of late 90’s, The Govt and personally The President Vladimir Putin realized the danger of free and irresponsible TV Channels (see part 2 – InfoWars)

Although the process could be morally and legally disgusting, The Govt managed to separate oligarchs from owning TV channels – Channel One and NTV, putting them under the state control

3 most wide-spread free-to-air TV stations since 2003 are controlled by Kremin

Other TV stations and networks have much smaller footprint and – after a harsh lesson – avoid political discussion and opposition-minded news coverage

TV is the largest media business, receiving far over 50% of Russia’s gross advertising spending (over 5,2 bln USD in 2008, over 3,7 bln in 2009)

18 TV broadcasters are licensed to distribute signal FTA across the country and 400 more have regional licenses.

PRINTED PRESS: DECLINING BLOSSOM Since 1999, the share of the printed press in ad spending distribution falls –

from nearly 50% in ‘99 to 20% in 2009. But the absolute figure grows – bringing the newspapers and magazines more than 2,4 bln USD in 2008 and 1,8 bln in 2009.

More than 20,000 printed periodicals are registered by the Communications. 500 daily newspapers (13 national), more than 1,700 weeklies and 17,000 titles of magazines are published

Press total readership stays at the level of 70% adult population Printed press is much less controlled by a worrying Government and

generally express broader pattern of opinion than TV or radio Leading segments of the press (circulation & advertising accounted):

TV-guides general interest weeklies fashion and style magazines business daily newspapers general interest dailies

Circulation figures shows the decline: total printed copies number fell from 6,1 bln in 2005 to 5,1 bln in 2009

RADIO: WAITING FOR A CHANGE

Radio business in Russia is concentrated in networked FM-stations – they receive almost 80% of national 0,6 bln USD spending on audio-advertising

News and speech stations are a few: Echo of Moscow, Radio Mayak, Vesti-FM, Russian News Service and Radio Liberty – while music and entertainment networks occupy the rest 41 FM frequencies available

Few novelties – like Kommersant-FM – launched this year with a goal to create Moscow City News Radio

The radio business expects a major reshuffle when satellite distribution will become available in 2012

NEW MEDIA: BE THE FIRST, TAKE EVERYTHING

Internet came to Russia just a few years later than it had become available to US or European consumers – by 1995 the service was universally accessible in capitals and main regional cities

Internet content sites – such as newspapers web sites or separate (from printed or broadcast media) were in place by 1997 for most large media outlets

Russian search engines – Rambler and Yandex – formed the market by 2001; at present, Yandex dominates Russian-language search overtaking Google by 2 times in Russia (62% vs 30%)

Livejournal (Живой Журнал) – www.livejournal.com – the most popular blogging platform in Russia, acquired in 2007 by Russian businessman from SixApart (WordPress)

www.mail.ru – Russian i-market phenomenon, nation’s prime e-mail service that occupies over 50% of the niche, also plays important role in media distribution and marketing (due to heavy traffic on front pages, up to 15% of nationwide traffic)

Major Russian internet news sources: Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Rian.ru, kp.ru, life.ru Typically, i-media are smaller versions of traditional editorial products such as

newspapers or magazines

Vasily Gatov

TREND: TREAT BLOGGING AS A FREE SPEECH MODEL

Russian traditional media has a strict editorial model: editor’s responsibility for every word published (the ancestry of censorship) leads to principal limitation of the themes, opinions and even form of the presentation

Blogging does not carry this problems – so journo’s started to blog about their job, unpublished stories, un-edited versions etc. Soon LiveJournal became a media in itself – just make Your “friend’s list” full of professionals and You’ll get original, untouched by any form of editorship media

Social networking had made some personal blogs as big in audience as serious printed media – leaders of the rating in LJ are read by 88,000 people daily

Blogging had been realized as a social organization tool, creating not only virtual groups that share common news or humanitarian interest, but also off-line activities such as volunteerism, politics, flash mobs etc

In 2009, some “blog-centric” news and commentary startups launched – such as www.slon.ru

Blogs are currently an important political debate platform that includes all parties and movements

NATIONAL VS LOCAL

National media occupies almost 60% of Russia’s media consumption, but there is still a big niche for local media

Local markets are similar to the national one but sometimes even worse in terms of state/governor control and involvement – there is a single-digit number of really independent local TV-stations with news and local debate shows for the whole country with 86 regions

Local press generally is less controlled and even oppositional to local authorities; same relates to regional internet-media that is few years behind the national

Positive difference is that local media startups are much cheaper than ones on the national level

THE MODEL OF MODERN MEDIA: WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN RUSSIA

Major differences come from ownership model (that affects primarily television) and editorial model and tradition (that affects non-broadcast media)

Television is different – both in news and commentary – due to serious state ownership and involvement in the production, editorial, even creative process within major nationwide TV stations

Newspapers & magazines are much less unlike their colleagues in the developed world – but still possess a visible signs of censorship, double moral and propagandist influence (not mandatory – state inflicted)

Internet media are of no difference being a fair ground of debate, competition and news reporting without a prejudice – primarily because i-media is done by younger people for younger audiences and because the state had been ignorant to the i-space and concentrated on TV and printed media

JOURNALIST AND EDITOR – RUSSIAN VERSION

Political control and exaggerated role of the editor in Russian media in general – results of ages of censorship and years of systematic pressure on “excessively free” media in 00’s

In “normal world” media, the journalist makes his news gathering and news writing job in the interest of the community served by his media – at least within last 50 or so years; the editor respects journalist’s rights as an author and usually only organizes the publication

Russian tradition is that journalists are working for the editor and in the interest of the editor (often either owner of the media or appointee of the owner) – the news job is considered as “supply to the editor”

JOURNALIST AND EDITOR – RUSSIAN VERSION

Nearly all important media outlets both in broadcast and printed world are parts of bigger business empires, where owners purchased or founded media as a weapon against business rivals or as protection from outside PR attacks

The combination of those 4 factors largely explain the core problem: it’s not the readers who decide to approve or dislike an author but the editor; Russian media is not a community service and not even a self-confient business – it is a part of the state’s or tycoon’s service mechanisms

Only few editorial offices have their Code of Conduct that regulate principles of editorial independence and moral hazard issues and other important professional problems; most of those are foreign-owned

The worst thing is that the majority of journalist do not see here the problem whatsoever – and they infect junior members of the editorial teams with this false perception