Television in Russia
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Television in Russia was introduced in 1931, when Russia was still known as the Russian SFSR.
History
Between 1941 and 1945 all television broadcasts in the nation were interrupted because of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. During these early years, most television programs were about life in the Soviet Union, cultural activities and sports.
In 1960 a second national television channel was established. This initial expansion of activity encompassed mostly the city of Moscow, but to a lesser extent also Leningrad, the Urals, Siberia and the Ukrainian SSR. Each republic, area or region had its own television station.
In the 1970s and 1980s, television become the preeminent mass medium. In 1988 approximately 75 million households owned television sets, and an estimated 93 percent of the population watched television. Moscow, the base from which most of the television stations broadcast, transmitted some 90 percent of the country's programs, with the help of more than 350 stations and nearly 1,400 relay facilities.
Today there are about 15,000 transmitters in the country. Development of domestic digital TV transmitters, led within "Multichannel" research program, had already been finished. New domestic digital transmitters have been developed and installed in Nizhniy Novgorod and Saint Petersburg in 2001-2002.
Satellite television
The first Soviet communication satellite, called Molniya, was launched in 1965. By November, 1967 the national system of satellite television, called Orbita was deployed. The system consisted of 3 highly elliptical Molniya satellites, Moscow-based ground uplink facilities and about 20 downlink stations, located in cities and towns of remote regions of Siberia and Far East. Each station had a 12-meter receiving parabolic antenna and transmitters for re-broadcasting TV signal to local householders.
However, a large part of Soviet central regions were still not covered by transponders of Molniya satellites. By 1976 Soviet engineers developed a relatively simple and inexpensive system of satellite television (especially for Central and Northern Siberia). It included geostationary satellites called Ekran equipped with powerful 300 W UHF transponders, a broadcasting uplink station and various simple receiving stations located in various towns and villages of Siberian region. The typical receiving station, also called Ekran, represented itself as a home-use analog satellite receiver equipped with simple Yagi-Uda antenna. Later, Ekran satellites were replaced by more advanced Ekran-M series satellites.
In 1979 Soviet engineers developed Moskva (or Moscow) system of broadcasting and delivering of TV signal via satellites. New type of geostationary communication satellites, called Gorizont, were launched. They were equipped by powerful onboard transponders, so the size of receiving parabolic antennas of downlink stations was reduced to 4 and 2.5 meters (in comparison of early 12- meter dishes of standard orbital downlink stations).
By 1989 an improved version of Moskva system of satellite television has been called Moskva Global'naya (or Moscow Global). The system included a few geostationary Gorizont and Express type of communication satellites. TV signal from Moscow Global’s satellites could be received in any country of planet except Canada and North-West of the USA.
Modern Russian satellite broadcasting services based on powerful geostationary buses such as Gals (satellite), Express, Yamal and Eutelsat which provide a large quantity of free-to-air television channels to millions of householders. Pay-TV is growing in popularity amongst Russian TV viewers. The NTV Russia news company, owned by Gazprom, broadcasts the NTV Plus package to 560,000 households, reaching over 1.5 million viewers.[1]
Six out of these seven satellites are new vehicles: four belong to the “Express-AM” family (set into orbit in 2003-2005), and two to the family “Express-A” (set to the orbit in 2000-2002). SESC has also the centre for TV/Radio signal compression, and the formation of transport flows as per the MPEG-2/DVB standard, which ensures the formation of packages from federal TV/ radio channels.
Digital broadcasting
Different alternatives were considered in the process of preparing proposals on shifting the country to digital broadcasting (thematic discussions began in the early 2000s), but the Ministry of IT and Communication decided to focus solely on terrestrial broadcasting as the object of digital TV implementation.
Two major bodies have been the major recipients of budget funds within the Federal Targeted Programme of Digital Broadcast Development:
- Ministry of IT and Communication
- the Federal State Unitary Enterprise ‘Russian TV and Radio Broadcasting Network.
The main obstacle for the introduction of digital TV is the need to replace the terrestrial transmitters and TV signal re-translators for the digital equipment.
Beginning
In December 2005, a project was launched to create a digital television network in the Republic of Mordovia, where the DVB-T standard will be utilised. The project objective was to ensure, for the population, the possibility of receiving a large (up to 10) number of TV channels and several radio stations in the stereo broadcasting mode and in the digital DVB-T standard. The project was implemented by OJSC “Volga Telecom” (a subsidiary of OJSC “Sviazinvest”) with support from the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communication of Russia, the Ministry of Culture, the National Association of TV Broadcasters and administration of the Republic of Mordovia.[2]
List of channels
This is a list of television channels that broadcast in Russia.
State-owned
Private
Discontinued
| Name | Owner | Established | Closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| MTK | Government of Moscow | 1991 | 1997 |
| Ostankino Channel One | RSTRC Ostankino | 1991 | 1995 |
| Ostankino Channel Four | RSTRC Ostankino | 1991 | 1994 |
| Rossiyskiye Univesritety | RSTRC Ostankino and VGTRK | 1992 | 1994 |
| TV6 | MIBC (Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation) (Since 1999 - Boris Berezovsky and Lukoil-Garant) |
1993 | 2002 |
| M1 | Mediainvest | 1994 | 2005 |
| Channel 24 | Kosmos-TV | 1994 | 1999 |
| AMTV | Marafon-TV and Moskva-Revyu | 1994 | 1996 |
| TeleExpo | Moskomimuschestvo and MosExpo | 1995 | 2001 |
| Prometei AST | AST, Gazprom | 1998 | 2002 |
| TVS | Media-Sotsium | 2002 | 2003 |
| Rambler TV | Prof-Media | 2003 | 2007 |
And many more.
 | This television-related list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
See also
- Television in the Soviet Union
- Freedom of the press in Russia
- List of Russian language television channels
References
- ^ "Broadband TV News | Central and East Europe | Home". Broadbandtvnews.com. Archived from the original on 2008-06-16. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
- ^ Groteck Co., Ltd for the European Audiovisual Observatory
