Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 3 – As the
television audience has declined and advertisers have cut spending on TV
advertising, Moscow’s main television stations despite their state subsidies are
in financial trouble. As a result, one online outlet says, some reportedly are
thinking about requiring Russians to pay for their broadcasts via monthly
communal service charges.
Given the ability of the state to
finance its chief form of propaganda for itself, commentator Viktoriya
Voloshina says, this seems at first blush to be only a sick joke. But in Putin’s
Russia, she continues, such jokes often precede a decision to make what some
are now laughing about a reality (censoru.net/2019/11/03/proigral-i-holodilnik-i-televizor.html).
The federal channels have been losing “not
only viewers but with them advertisers,” both of which are shifting to the
internet. If advertising money declines,
the commentator suggests, the television stations will not have the money to
modernize their broadcasts and will lose viewers even more rapidly, a vicious
circle only taxing the population can break.
As Voloshina puts it, “the country has
divided up into two camps: those who still remain true to television and those
who have shifted to the internet for information and entertainment. The first
is condemned to defeat because its adepts are aging and dying off.”
In this situation, she says, the Kremlin
has only two choices: improve television, something there may not now be money
for, or close down YouTube “or better the entire internet” so that people will
have no choice but to watch television.
What this means is that the supposed
contest between the television and the refrigerator has ended but in an “unexpected”
way: both have lost. There is indeed less food in the refrigerator but at the same
time people aren’t turning to the television. Instead, they are relying on the
internet, a final judgment of the Putin system both ideologically and
practically.
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