Vladimir Putin's first live broadcast as Prime Minister lasted 3 hours and 8 minutes. The Prime Minister said 787 sentences made up of 13,171 words and 74,402 letters to answer the questions asked by ordinary Russians. In 2007, when he answered the public's questions as President, he was somewhat more talkative, uttering 14,433 words made up of 82,564 letters in 3 hours and 5 minutes.
The Prime Minister answered a total of 76 questions, more than in any of his earlier broadcasts. The previous record had been in 2003, when he answered 69 questions.
There were 1,636,800 calls and 642,000 text messages to the Prime Minister. For the first time, the studio audience was also invited to address Putin. They asked 14 questions and applauded his answers 17 times. Another 12 questions came from people in the regions during a video link-up with the Prime Minister. (There were 32 such questions last year.) Eleven questions came by telephone, four were posted online, four came as text messages and five were asked by the host. Also, Putin answered 26 questions during a blitz interview at the end of the Q&A session. Putin received a total of seven requests this year, an unusually large number. Last year, he was asked for assistance only once. People were most interested in social policy: 14 questions concerned this topic (21 last year). The economy followed with twelve questions and personal questions came in third with nine questions. In 2007, only eight questions were related to the economy, and only four personal questions were asked.
As usual, the most frequently heard word was the pronoun "we". The Prime Minister used it 215 times. It was followed by "I", used 122 times and "everyone", used 78 times (last year 183, 118, and 67 times, respectively). The changing economic situation can be seen from the fact that Putin used the word "crisis" 20 times this year, as opposed to just once last year.