A smaller Russian TV audience watches the prime minister's televised Q&A session.
Yesterday, TNS Russia, a national TV ratings company, published data on how many people watched the four hour Q&A session, "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin. Continued." The show was broadcast live on Channel Rossiya 1 Thursday. Though still quite popular, the audience for this Q&A session was the smallest since Vladimir Putin became the prime minister.
The first televised Q&A session aired in 2001, during Vladimir Putin's first term in office as president. This project was designed specially for Mr Putin. His predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, did not use this format to communicate with the public. Q&A sessions were held during Vladimir Putin's two terms as president, except in 2004. Two federal TV channels organised these sessions, Channel One and Rossiya. These programmes remained very popular with an audience share of 60% on average.
When Dmitry Medvedev became president in 2008, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not give up the spectacle of a live broadcast to all of Russia. Apparently, for reasons of political correctness and since Mr Putin was no longer head of state, only one network, the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, that operates Rossiya, taped his Q&A session. In 2008, the company's TV and radio stations broadcast a revamped session called "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin." In 2009 the word "Continued" was added to the name.
The basic format remained the same: the programme included live questions from the public from all across Russia via telephone and SMS. Later, people in the studio were allowed to ask questions. The sessions were always at least three hours since they began. This is how long Vladimir Putin's first session as prime minister lasted in 2008.
The programme's ratings were impressive. Its audience share in Moscow reached 41.2%, or a little less than a half of all people watching TV at that time. Its ratings totalled 7.9%, which is every eighth Muscovite. The nation-wide ratings were a bit higher yet reaching 42.7% with a 7.4% rating.
In 2009 Vladimir Putin beat his own air record answering questions for 4 hours 2 minutes. Though slightly lower than the previous year, the audience share and ratings were still high – 37.8% and 6.9% in Moscow and 39.6% and 7.1% nation-wide, respectively.
This year Mr Putin beat his duration record again. "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin. Continued." lasted 4 hours 26 minutes. By the start of the Q&A session, the audience share of the Rossiya 1 channel that broadcast it had increased by almost a half while the other channels lost a significant number of viewers. However, this session had the lowest ratings in three years. The previous two instalments – in 2008 and 2009 – were close, but 2010's Putin session showed a significant decrease. Its audience share was 30.6% with a rating of 6.3% in Moscow. This means the audience dropped by approximately 10% over the previous two years. Nationwide, 33.5% of the potential audience was watching "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin. Continued." with a rating of 6%. Again, this is almost 8% less than before.
In informal conversations with a Kommersant correspondent, several high-ranking government and Kremlin officials pointed out that "four and a half hours is too long; the programme starts losing its novelty both in terms of content and format." Network officials agreed, but none dared to openly state his opinion of "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin. Continued."
President Medvedev's TV address will air this week. As Kommersant reported previously, President Medvedev will be answering questions from the heads of Channel One, the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and NTV – Konstantin Ernst, Oleg Dobrodeyev and Vladimir Kulistikov – on December 24. The president's programme, called "Review of the Year with the President of Russia", first appeared three years ago and, naturally, will look more modest than "A Conversation with Vladimir Putin." Medvedev's interview will be broadcast live on three federal TV channels. "Review" has an indisputable advantage over "Conversation." Its length is much more reasonable for television – it will air for no more than 90 minutes.
Arina Borodina