"The Television is Broken"

I saw a great article in yesterday's Johnson's Russia List. Johnson had it headlined, "Commentator Sees Declining Influence of Russian Television on Public Opinion." I wasn't able to find the English-language version or the original in Russian anywhere online, but I liked the article so much (Panyushkin's comment about "idiot housewives" notwithstanding) that I'm posting the full text here. He says it all better than I possibly could:

Commentary by Valeriy Panyushkin: "The Television Is Broken"
Gazeta.ru, October 11, 2005

They have lost us. They are the government. And we are the people. They are pulling on the bridle that used to hold us, but the bridle no longer leads to an iron bit, and the bit no longer bites into our mouths. They still turn the screw the way they used to, but the screw has slipped from its threads and turning it no longer causes it to tighten. They have lost us. No one knows how we live or who we listen to, and no one knows what we will be up to tomorrow.

Television was the bridle and the screw. Do you recall how in 1999 Vladimir Putin was able to use television to go from being an unknown prime minister with a 2% popularity rating to a universally beloved president with a rating above 50%? Back then you could persuade us with television, intimidate us with television, mobilize us with television. Television was a powerful political weapon. Naturally the government took control of that weapon and sharpened it for its own ends. Recall how undesirable television hosts disappeared, how live broadcasts were taken off the air, how opposition politicians disappeared from our screens.

The only problem was that television is only a powerful political weapon on one condition. We can only be persuaded, intimidated or mobilized by television on one condition, namely that we watch it and believe it. But we do not watch it or believe it anymore.

The television ratings that five years ago were led by news and political analysis shows are now filled with series. People are not watching the news, and they are not watching political analysis. Television has come to be viewed purely as entertainment. That is to say, it has lost it propaganda role, because no one would ever think of agitating the people using the merry-go-rounds in a recreational park.

Television's audience has changed. If you take a look at the sociological research you can instantly see that working men and working women have stopped watching television. The only ones still watching are idiot housewives and children. Children do not vote. Idiot housewives are told by their husbands for whom to vote. True, old people still watch television, but everyone know they vote for the communists.

People who make decisions, even people who make decisions at the family level, even simply heads of households, are not watching television. The government can no longer influence the way they think.

Indirect confirmation of this comes in the form of the latest television hero: the sorcerer Grabovoy. No serious person is going to watch Grabovoy. A working man or a working woman, even if they do not have higher education, is going to turn off that junk immediately, because a serious person has no desire to fill his or her head with that junk. And if Grabovoy is getting ratings, that means that it is idiots who are watching television these days. The last time sorcerers, mediums and gods appeared on television was 15 years ago, before the country fell apart, when no one believed television except for idiots. And if there are sorcerers on the screen now, and idiots in front of the screen, then that means that television has once again ceased to be a propaganda weapon, just like it did back then, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

You may have noticed that in recent weeks television has suddenly started showing people who for the longest time had no access to the TV screen. Now it is none other than members of the opposition who are getting on television. Boris Nemtsov, Irina Khakamada and sometimes even communists are appearing and saying things. When was the last time that Khakamada was invited to appear on television? You may recall that two years ago she was even forbidden to appear on the game show "Chto? Gde? Kogda?" (What? Where? When?). Do you know what has happened?

They, the government, are trying to rectify the disastrous state of the television audience. They are bringing opposition politicians back to television just a little bit, and they are letting television do just a little bit of live broadcasting. And if you have not noticed these changes, that means that you do not watch television, which fact only serves to confirm what I have said about the declining role of this most important of the arts.

We the people have stopped watching television as if breaking a chain, losing the bridle or stripping the threads on the turned screw. Does that mean that we have become free? No. A dog that slips his chain or a horse that slips his bridle do not become free, they tumble headfirst. And if the threads of a screw are stripped, the mechanism held in place by the screw does not become freer, it runs out of control.

A discouraging picture: they, the government, can no longer control us in any way except by force of arms, and now we are running out of control.