A global balancing act: New structures in the Russian Media

The Soviet media landscape described by McQuail as an ‘old media system’ was characterized by:
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separate press and television organisations;
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media subject to central, government or party censorship albeit with a fair degree of editorial autonomy on matters not politically sensitive;
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economic foundations not based on a market that limited potentials of audiences to support production and distribution costs through advertising, but rooted in centralised economic planning with little respect to local economic needs .

Three basic features distinguish the present Russian media from the previous Soviet structure. The first underlines new priorities of media audiences. Traditionally, the Soviet Union was portrayed as a reading nation. Today, Russia might be better defined as a watching nation, with the TV replacing newspapers at the top of the media hierarchy. Russians buy and read newspapers less. In 1999, the overall audience of the print media was equal to 80% of the population while the leading medium, TV, got the attention of about 95% of all Russians, and radio of about 82%.

The decline in newspaper reading was caused by lowing of living standards, increasing social disappointment, the loss of readers’ respect for media. While five years ago more than 70% of Russians considered the church and media the highest moral authorities in society, now these figures have decreased by half and stand close to 30 or 40%. Of all media, Russians trust TV more. 36% find the TV as the most reliable medium, while newspapers are defined as reliable by only 13% of Russians. About 40% of Russians watch news programs broadcast from Moscow every day while the overall audience of the national press does not exceed 20%. Another reason to explain the increasing popularity of the TV is its openness to every Russian and its almost equal distribution nation-wide.

The second significant transformation concerns the structure of the print media market. The dominant vertical hierarchy of the Soviet media has been almost totally replaced by horizontal configurations based on regional/local markets. In terms of media preferences, national dailies are being progressively substituted by local newspapers published near readers’ homes.

The last but not least third radical change concerns the introduction of advertising into everyday activities in the media industry. In many respects the Russian situation remains unique, because Soviet media economics operated on entirely different principles of a planned and highly centralised economy. The rise of advertising brought about real restructuring of the media market, introduced competition for revenues, and placed the Russian media into the universal context of globalisation, commercialisation, and mass culture. Subsequent developments such as audience segmentation, individualisation of choice, emergence of public opinion research, and the rise of completely new enterprises that did not exist in the Soviet Union, like advertising or PR agencies, have been brought into being by the demands of the rapidly expanding advertising market.

Today’s ‘division of roles’ between the press and television in Russia reflects an obvious shift of the national media system toward more general patterns of industrial functioning. The organisation of media companies is no longer based on exceptional rules of the Soviet ideologically dependent media, but on general laws of (free) market economy. From the structural point of view, Russian media of today has almost nothing to do with the Soviet media system. Perhaps, the only thing that has been sustained throughout the history of Russia, is the relationship between the media and political power. But this seems to be another story.

New structures for Russian media
The break of the Soviet print media pyramid has led to the emergence of relatively isolated and independent newspaper markets. Today, regional and local newspapers provide readers with a complete package of local news, soft entertainment, and advertising. On the other hand, while the role of the Moscow political dailies has declined, their presence in regional geographical markets is still visible. Often they fulfill an agenda-setting function for the local press and considerably influence regional decision makers and journalists. The largest share of readers of nationally distributed Moscow dailies (40,7%) is represented by regional state officials, political activists, managers of middle and high level, intellectuals, and students. Reading of regional/local dailies is often supplemented by reading of national weeklies. This is true both of mass circulation newspapers for wide audiences like Argumenti i Facty and of quality analytical news magazines like Itogi, Vlast, and Dengi for well-educated and well-paid readers.

The modern Russian newspaper market has changed enormously. From 1993 to 1997, the Russian print media showed a 45% growth in the number of publications. Entirely new types of newspapers like business dailies and glossy magazines were established. Essential differences are also found in audience characteristics. People in industrial centres of northern, north-western, and central regions of Russia are more active newspaper readers than those in the Far East. Education, gender are also important factors that influence the consumption of newspapers. Readers in the age group from 35 to 44 form the biggest segment of the newspaper audience.

The development of the Russian press incorporates many trends of a global nature. Newspaper markets in many countries are also characterised by the leading role of the regional/local press. The decline in readers’ interest in the press is not an exclusively post-Soviet phenomenon. The print press of today again is increasingly becoming the medium of educated intellectual elites and decision-makers. The decreasing interest of Russians in newspapers is in a way a national variation of a more general tendency, thus proving the Russia’s increasingly involvement in global developments.

Nowadays Russians as the decade before have rediscovered that the media are not simply instruments of political influence, but are commercial enterprises and in their market operations are much more dependent on their audiences than on their political sponsors. Again like at early stages of liberalisation the key question is newspaper management, the ability of media firms to take into account the requirements of audiences, the state of the advertising industry, and real living standards of Russians.

Another key media sector, the Russian television, is also rapidly developing. Currently there are about 800 TV stations all over Russia, including about 300 owned completely or partly by the state and nearly 500 private stations. Some sources provide an even bigger number, stating that in Russia there exist nowadays almost 1000 regional TV channels. All Russians can receive two national channels: ORT (Public Russian Television) available to 98% of the population, and RTR (Russian Television, 95%). Four other Moscow channels have also obtained national positions: NTV (reaches 72% of the population), TV–6 (58%), TVC (39%), and ‘Kultura’ (Culture, 36%). However, the popularity of channels differs. While the ORT remains the most popular (41% of national audience), the RTR (13%) has not been able to secure the same level of popularity. The private channel NTV, set up only in 1993, has arisen as the second favourite channel in Russia (25%).

TV in Russia is the most powerful medium, with 94% of Russians watching TV every day. An average time spent for watching TV is about 3 to 3,5 hours per day. 99% of households in Russia have at least one TV set; about two-thirds have colour TV sets, and 45% still possess black-and-white sets. Therefore it is clear why TV has grown as a key medium to carry national advertising. In 1999, of $1350 million, the total amount of advertising money, national and regional TV channels received about $400 million, the same amount spent on all types of print media.

Major shifts in the TV sector began to appear only one decade ago. 1991 saw the rise of private TV companies, mainly in the regions and the independent production sector (REN-TV). In 1993 NTV and TV-6 broadcast their first programs. Today, the modification of the Russian TV industry goes along several lines:
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Private channels challenged the state TV at the national level (NTV and TV-6).
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Private TV companies have evolved as important regional sources of political news and entertainment; in 1999 regional/local TV has also attracted 84% of all TV advertising.
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The traditional monopoly of terrestrial channels was challenged by private networks – REN-TV, STS, and TNT.

Structural shifts within the TV sector were accompanied by essential changes in audiences’ tastes. The high level of TV involvement in political life played a decisive role in the election campaigns in 1995–1996 and 1999–2000. But today, after the pre-election fights have calmed down, it became obvious that Russians do not watch what is shown but only what they want to. According to statistical surveys, the audience prefers information programs (63% of all TV watchers), feature films (53%), entertaining programs (48%), music programs (37%), and feature TV series (23%). It means that for an average Russian, television becomes one of the major entertaining media and this tendency is growingly reflecting a different perception of TV by those in power, on the one hand, and by the audience, on the other.

Russians tend to watch more feature films, entertainment, family, cultural, educational, children’s, and sports programs. The shift away from politics is obvious. This is absolutely true of the radio industry. Private commercial music radio stations established during the past decade have succeeded because they managed to find out changed interests of listeners and new demands of advertisers. The first radio networks set by the Moscow stations ‘Evropa plyus’ and ‘Nostalgi,’ either began co-operation with local stations by making agreements on joint programming and advertising sales or set up their own local branches. The largest commercial network is formed by 257 local stations owned by the ‘Russkoe radio’. Its success is ensured mostly by music programming that rests upon Russian pop and light music.

Increased professionalism in developing formats and relations with both advertisers and listeners resulted in success of music radio stations. Moscow-based ‘Radio maximum’, ‘Radio 101’, ‘Serebryanyi dozhd’’, and ‘Radio retro’ have become really local media, capable of targeting specific groups of audience with clear demographic profiles and well-known music and news tastes. But the real breakthrough has occurred outside Moscow, in local media markets. The general increase in the number of commercial radio stations has been accompanied by the growth in advertising money channelled to radio. Today, almost one-fourth of local advertising – 21 % – goes to local radio stations.

How powerful are national traditions?
In terms of general media typology the structure of the modern Russian media appears to be non-specific. Even in the Soviet Union the media might be seen as a specific variation of more or less general trends. Some features of the broadcasting system (support for enlightening, cultural, non-fiction programming, aesthetic approach, corporativism) and of the print media market (existence of numerous publications targeted to specialised audiences, profitability of the print media business) proved that even under the conditions of the planned economy and ideological control there remained some space uncontrolled by the political organisations for basic laws of the media to show up.

Nowadays the Russian media are influenced by several factors of a general nature, of which some obviously play a crucial role in the still ongoing process of change. Indeed, the change of socio-economic paradigm and the global progress of information and communications technologies that are in different ways transforming traditional media systems everywhere have become principal agents to shape the transformation of the Russian media. The scale of changes, the combination of influences, and the range of consequences for the media vary from country to country in Central and Eastern Europe, and in new states, the former republics of the Soviet Union, as well.

In the course of the latest transformations, Russian media structures and the media-power paradigm have obviously integrated traditions of the pre-Revolutionary Russian press to a larger degree, thus demonstrating deeper roots in the national history than were considered by Soviet media scholars. At the rise of the nineteenth century, Russian newspapers were concentrated mostly in hands of the state and local authorities. Private publications operated only in the capitals, Moscow and St-Petersburg. Foundations for the regional structure of the newspaper market were laid down late in the 1850s and early 1860s. At the core of the system was a network of official regional newspapers subordinated to governors’ offices.

Consequently, many provincial newspapers were subsidised and often directly controlled by local state authorities – the governors. Besides, the Russian state put serious restrictions (abandoned in 1863) on the volume of advertising in newspapers, thus forcing early entrepreneurs of the press industry to look for state support. Private newspapers as alternatives to official publications matured slowly, and the real breakthrough in the press industry occurred only after 1880, when for the first time in the Russian history newspapers outnumbered magazines.

Early in the twentieth century the pre-Revolutionary Russian government introduced a system of subsidies for newspapers. Only two state officials, the Minister of Finance and the Minister of the Interior, had the right to decide on which newspapers were to be supported and to define the amount of money to be given to them. Though almost two-thirds of all Russian newspapers received such money, there existed a clear interconnection between loyalty and disloyalty. Publications that supported the government financially benefited compared to neutral or opposing newspapers critical toward those in power.

Obstacles hindering the development of the private press in pre-Revolutionary Russia might be also found in the regulatory framework. The existence of numerous censorship statutes (1804, 1826, 1828, 1865, 1882), the very system of preliminary censorship, the late adoption of press freedom only after the bourgeois revolution in April, 1917, and many other historical circumstances help to explain why the later Soviet system of dual Communist-state control over the media came into operation with so little opposition from journalists and the public and why it was efficiently operated by the Soviet authorities.

Continuous attempts of imperial Russian authorities to put formal and informal constrains over newspapers and magazines, in addition to the legislative control from the state, paved the way to the strong paternal tradition that later in the Soviet period laid strong foundations for authoritarian control upon the media system. Examples from the modern history of the Second Republic have reaffirmed the paternal character of the media-power relationship. In the traditional ‘family,’ as Russian society can be portrayed, the role of the respectable decision-making father has often been performed by the political elite while the pre-Revolutionary press, or the Soviet and even the post-Soviet media, often behaved as an innocent and obedient child.

New features describing the present state of the Russian media market are in fact not only pure consequences of the post-Soviet transition, but echo general world-wide developments. However, there still exists the considerable influence of specific national circumstances – the large and sparsely populated territory, existence of economic inequalities among regions, widespread ignorance of real economic circumstances of the media market, the lack of managerial experience.

The unevenness of the Russian economy goes hand in hand with inequalities in media developments and broad access to the media by Russians. Discrepancies within the industry and profession are obvious. Compared to Moscow journalists, professionals employed by regional media act less professionally in gathering and promoting news and comments, are more dependent upon direct commands of local authorities than their Moscow colleagues. The low professional level of Russian journalists does not ultimately follow the lack of professional training or the inability of journalists to practice in accordance with rules of the profession. Today’s discrepancies in professional performance are first of all connected with the weak economic positions of local media, incapable in most cases of extracting revenues from local advertising markets. Average salaries of Russian journalists in the regional press do not exceed $50, thus making them to seek sources of concealed advertising of ‘black PR’, additional jobs, or simply to plant vegetables in their gardens and breed up domestic animals or poultry.

The discrepancy between regional/local newspapers and advertising markets still has to be overcome. A recent study of freedom of speech in regional media markets defines at least five sources of financing for mass media corporations, which include: federal funding, non-federal funding, advertising, individuals (subscribers, retail sales of printed matter, and subscription for payments for radio and TV), redistribution of funds within the framework of a particular media corporation.

Regional circumstances influencing structures of the media markets in many cases are completely different, thus creating different configurations of regional media. Statistics show that more authoritarian and paternalistic markets are described by better access to print media, which are supported from local budgets (=non-federal funding), while in more liberal and less paternalistic markets newspapers exist in a more competitive economic environment. Less intrusion of authorities also contributes to freer competition in the electronic media.

The Russian media system is still undergoing a manifold transformation inspired not only by the ongoing process of economic and socio-political changes. One cannot underestimate the role of ICT development in transforming old media structures and old patterns of media consumption. The progress of the Internet has significantly increased the number of Russians with access to more diverse types of digital content. Special media projects for the Runet are challenging both print media and news agencies thus promoting a new culture of communication and new standards of journalism in Russia.

Conclusion
New pressures and new structures of the Russian media are controversial in nature, but indeed their complexity provide real competition between the authoritarian past and emerging more democratic and open society. Audiences became an important factor of change and consequently media content is not being influenced completely by the political/economic elite. The debate about media oligarchs has overshadowed the role of influential, although underestimated agents of change as media traditions originating in the pre-Revolutionary press and lack of managerial experience resulting in low quality and professional standards of the Russian journalism. It is important to remember that the present Russian media has sustained many features of the ‘old’ Soviet media order, but in a specific mixture of the national and global, particular and general, European and Asian nature.