REN TV

Ownership

Until 1 July 2005 the channel belonged to its founder Irena Lesnevskaya and her son (30%) and the Russian utility RAO UES headed by Anatoly Chubais. In 2005 Bertelsmann's RTL bought 30% of REN TV with steel maker Severstal and oil and natural gas company Surgutneftegaz each buying 35%.

Severstal's Alexey Germanovich on 18 December 2006 ceded the chairperson of REN TV's board to Lyubov Sovershaeva, President Vladimir Putin's former deputy envoy to the North-West federal okrug and chairperson of the board at ABRos Investments, a subsidiary of St Petersburg's Russia bank. ABRos had bought a considerable stake in REN. The bank, whose chairman, Yury Kovalchuk, was a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, owned 38% of its home town's TRK Petersburg TV channel – and was likely to buy more of that company, analysts had told 19 December 2006's Kommersant-daily. REN TV and TRK Petersburg would merge into a single media holding, though they would operate independently, industry observers had told the daily.

Russian media had reported that oil and gas group Surgutneftegaz had sold its stake in the channel to ABRos, which had increased its stake in the media company from 45% to 70%. '[T]here are indications that Bertelsmann was interested in selling up, after about 18 months in the Russian TV market,' the broadcasting news website added.

Currently National Media Group owns 82%, and Russian state oil company Gazprom subsidiary SOGAZ owns 18%.

History

Production company

The history of REN TV is connected to the effects of the August Coup, when former heads of Soviet Central Television Irena Lesenskaya and her son Dimitri decided to create their production company. The company was registered under the name «ЛИС и С» («Лесневская Ирена Стефановна и сын») on 19 August 1991, but due to political chaos, as well as a similar name being registered at the time («ЛИС’С», Sergey Lisovskiy), the registration was delayed. Two weeks after the coup the company was registered under the name «REN» (formally registered on 1 October 1991).

Its first programs were Astrological Forecast (13 November 1991, RTR) and the Christmas special The Irony of Fate, or Merry Christmas) (24 December 1991, First Channel of CT SSSR, days before its dissolution). These two were followed by other productions for national channels, such as To Those Who Remember, Rost's Stable, Man-to-Man Talk from Eldar Ryazanov to Boris Yeltsin Dog-Show: Me and My Dog and The White Woodpecker Club. At the time of founding, its staff consisted of only nine people, though ten years later, it rose to over 500.

Becoming a channel

In the spring of 1996, REN-TV became the main shareholder of JSC Joint Stock Company Accept, a television company that owned a license to broadcast on UHF channel 49 Moscow (occupied at the time by the local channel M—49, launched on 1 January 1994). In May of the same year, the production company REN-TV started work on the creation of its full-blown homonymous television channel. It was assumed that the schedule would consist of its existing original productions. Irena and Dmitry Lesnevsky talked about getting Channel 49 at their own disposal as follows:Volodya Molchanov and I were in Israel. <...> And there I found a man who said that he had read somewhere in an interview that I dreamed of my own channel. And then this man, who escaped from Russia and once worked for the Ministry of Communications, said that he took a license for himself, he now had a channel in Moscow, but few people watch him — Channel 49. <...> I was given a meeting with this man who said: "I've been waiting for you! People come to me with sacks of money. But I would like to give it not to people who will make money from it, but to a production company so that there is content, so that there is television." I say, "So you're also an ideologist!" He says, "Well, I still dream of returning to Russia someday." <...> In short, we agreed on a certain amount, extending the payment for two or three years. Then he demanded more and more every time, until we sent him. But we paid him everything, and he was still complaining when we sold it — he realized that they had made a fortune out of nothing. Not only did the Kremlin want to take it away, but also the Germans came in with the money. He decided that we hadn't paid him, that we should give him some kind of percentage. But it was actually funny. He didn't put anything into it at all, except for the license.Irena Lesnevskaya There are four UHF channels that can be developed: 31, 49, 51 and 27. Anyone in Moscow can become accessible to the widest audience, free of charge, according to the same scheme in which TV-6 was introduced. We have held talks with channel 49. And in February we managed to buy it. <...> We bought a transmitter, a small staff of ten people, and debts that were immediately paid off. From that moment on, a new era began for us, the transition from an ambitious production company to an equally ambitious broadcasting company.Dmitry Lesnevsky

Since that time, M-49's network started to serve as a test broadcast for the new REN-TV channel, whose launch line-up consisted exclusively of productions from its first three to four years of operation, that it made for other networks. According to the founders, REN-TV was supposed to be "an intelligent channel, a space for talented people who cannot achieve their goals on existing TV channels": It was in this "intelligent" format that the channel carried out its programming format during the first few years of operation. Under the leadership of Irena Lesnevskaya, the first generation of post-Soviet Russian journalists appeared, such as Eldar Ryazanov, Yuri Rost, Grigory Gorin, Bulat Okudzhava, Alexander Shirvindt, Yuri Nikulin, Vladimir Molchanov, Arkady Arki, and Leonid Filatov.

1995-2005: REN TV under the Lesnesvkys

On 1 January 1997, REN-TV began broadcasting instead of NVS, but at the same time it briefly left the name of its predecessor on its logo, this being rendered as REN-NVS. Initially, the channel began broadcasting between 13:15 and 17:00 Moscow time and ended it around 01:00, and the amount of airtime varied from 9 to 12 hours a day. Later, the broadcast began at 14:00. The channel was broadcast to the regions through local affiliates (Reg-TV in St. Petersburg, Network NN in Nizhny Novgorod, Afontovo in Krasnoyarsk, Everything for You in Tambov, Channel Four in Yekaterinburg, TV2 in Tomsk, Takt in Kursk, Akhtuba in Volgograd, SKAT in Samara, Expovim in Rostov-on-Don, Istoki in Orel, Bars in Ivanovo, Yekaterinodar in Krasnodar, and others), which have been receiving satellite signals since NVS existed. Until 1999, REN-TV broadcast its programs without time zone adjustments, using a single feed calibrated to Moscow's timezone, and at night and in the morning, for the network's affiliates outside the European part of Russia, it delivered a full or partial relay of the following day's schedule in order to retransmit them by partners at a more convenient time for them. On 6 September 1999, REN-TV began time-sensitive broadcasting throughout Russia, having four time zone feeds: +0 (for European Russia), +2 (for the Urals and, until 2016, Western Siberia), +4 (for Siberia, until 2016, for Central and Eastern Siberia) and +7 (for the Far East), becoming the third TV channel in Russia to launch such a service. By the end of the 1990s, the channel's broadcasting was extended to most of the country, while until 2003 it was carried out exclusively on the network principle - with retransmission in all regions except Moscow through the frequencies of its regional affiliates. REN-TV

To compete with the larger Russian TV broadcasters, the channel, led by Irena Lesnevskaya and her son Dmitry, began to actively develop its operations. Positioning itself as a general TV channel, REN-TV included news and current affairs programs, entertainment and music programs, author programs (programs produced by a single presenter), sports programs and events in its network, television series, mostly American, animated series and feature films from international catalogues.

In 1997-2016, the in-house productions were made by CJSC REN-TV, later having its name dehyphenated to CJSC REN TV. In entertainment programs, both of its own and third-party production since 2003, the legal entity Acceptance LLC (REN TV Television Channel) generally used. 70% of the programs aired on the REN-TV channel were owned by the television company of the same name.

New leadership (2005—2006)

On 1 July 2005, 30% of REN-TV's share capital, owned by its founders Irena and Dmitry Lesnevsky, went to a German-Luxembourgish company (RTL Group), and the RAO UES package went equally (35% each) to the Russian companies Severstal Group and Surgutneftegaz. The Lesnevskys left the TV channel after selling their shares. From that moment on, only the REN-Film organization was under the control of the founders of REN-TV, which in 2006-2007 was combined with the cable TV channel Mini Movie and the magazine The New Times (formerly the Novoe Vremya magazine) to form the REN Media Group holding company, no longer affiliated with REN TV.

In August 2005, entertainment producer and creative producer Vyacheslav Murugov left REN-TV for STS.

Since 14 October 2005, Alexander Ordzhonikidze, former CEO of NTV-Plus, became the new CEO of the TV company and media holding, and the TV channel was now represented by RTL Group representative Ralf Siebenahler. Ilya Kuzmenkov was appointed editor-in-chief. Stanislav Pribylov became the deputy general director and general producer of the TV channel. Cases of censorship of news items on REN-TV began to appear and received public publicity: in particular, a story about relations between Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as possible turns in the career of President Putin, were removed from the Week program. The same program did not include an interview with Zurab Tsereteli (the story with him was about the construction of a $15 million crystal chapel on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow) and a video about the closure of the case against the son of then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who ran over a woman in his car.

Almost immediately after the change of management and owners, the reorganization of the entire broadcasting network and a massive staff outflow began: several employees of the news service, headed by its head Elena Fedorova, left the channel. and the editor-in-chief of the TV program "24" Olga Shorina Olga Romanova was also suspended.

During the initial period of the new management team, new entertainment programs appeared (Brainwashers: Violence against Science, Super Nurse, the game show Deal?!) and new series ( The Students, The Tourists, Company History, Bachelor Party, or Big Sex in a Small Town, and others). The time given for sports, which had been removed from the channel three years earlier, was expanded: live broadcasts of Formula 1 races with Alexey Popov's commentary appeared (in 2007, due to Popov's return to VGTRK, he was replaced by Alexander Kabanovsky and Alexander Kaminsky and in early 2009, due to low ratings, despite obtaining rights until 2010, its broadcasts switched back to VGTRK), professional boxing fights and selected football matches. Among other things, a live broadcast of the annual Domino Day domino event also made its rounds and foreign programs and TV series as Alpine Patrol, Rebellious Spirit, Friends, Living Delicious with Jamie Oliver and The Naked Chef. According to Sergey Spiridonov, the channel's program director, the expansion of entertainment content on REN-TV was explained by the needs of its target audience: in particular, he believed that "people need to be entertained." When launching these TV shows, the German side largely referred to the experience of the TV channel RTL, whose line-up was composed primarily of entertainment programs, specifically following its philosophy of infotainment.

"The pure juice of TV airtime" (2006—2007)

On 4 September 2006, the channel began broadcasting under the updated Russified REN TV brand, now styled in Cyrillic as opposed to Latin. At the same time, the updated concept of "the pure juice of TV airtime" was launched. The leaders and owners of REN TV explained the transition to it primarily by the fact that under the old leadership the channel was distinguished by a "vague programming policy and a vague impression of the channel". The idea of the rebranding was up to RTL Group, and one of the goals of the rebrand was to increase the amount of hours to entertainment programming. All these changes were negatively perceived by the founder of REN-TV, Irena Lesnevskaya.

In the spring of 2007, program director Sergey Spiridonov and Sergey Isakov, Deputy General Director of the media holding for Regional development (both held similar positions at TV-3 and Prof-Media holding, respectively), left the channel. With their departure, almost none of the original management team remained. Soon, CEO Ralph Siebenahler, whose real involvement in the management of the channel was zero, also left REN TV and Alexander Ordzhonikidze, who combined the duties of the head of both the TV company and the channel, took over this post. From this point on, the impact RTL Group had on REN TV was minimal: despite the remaining stake, the group was no longer involved in the channel's operational management. After that, other personnel changes took place at REN TV: in particular, Alexey Abakumov, the former director of Radio Rossiya, became the editor-in-chief of the channel and its news service, and the press service was headed by Anton Nazarov.

On 2 April 2007, REN TV switched to 24-hour broadcasting (previously, the channel practiced small technical breaks in broadcasting from 04:55 to 06:00 Moscow time). Despite this, until November 2010, REN TV in Moscow went on an official overnight weekly technical break from Monday to Tuesday from 01:45 to 06:00. Also, until the end of 2010, part of the nighttime broadcast of REN TV was occupied by a block of promos, bumpers and clips, relevant in a short period of time (up to a week from the moment of the block's demonstration).

The new executives continued to pursue the same programming policy as at the end of the last TV season (2005-2006), launching a number of entertainment programs. and TV series, among them Gogol Street, For Fun, Zadov in Reality, Scheme of Laughter, Three From Above and Brothers in Different Ways. They also did not leave aside the production of documentaries, as well as news and current affairs programming - as part of the channel's line of documentaries, tapes about the murder of Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya the case of Private Sychev and other cases of hazing in the Russian army were released, miners, and also about the events in Chechnya and the anniversary of the Beslan tragedy. But at the same time, films and programs on secular and "yellow" topics related to scandals and the daily lives of personalities from the world of show business began to appear more and more frequently in its documentary slot, or with biographies of famous people who had passed away, as well as revealing documentaries and films more loyal to the pro-government point of view (like Beyond Polonium about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, which was shown in January 2007).

Programming during this phase

Since 2010, new programs have appeared on the channel (dating reality show Let's Try?, pre-reality show Don't Lie to Me!), including Emergency Call 112, which was transferred from Channel Five. The main focus of this season's program policy was on serious debates and current affairs formats (Honestly!, Justice, Injustice, Greed, Sentence and others). Within the framework of this concept, the television series The Sword, The Last Secret of the Master, Cherkizon: Disposable People and sketch show Soldiers and the Officers appeared.

On 15 August 2011, REN TV changed its logo and concept again, introducing a new style and slogan, "You're with your friends". According to Dmitry Velikanov, general producer of REN TV, the previous concept had exhausted itself in a year and did not contain a sufficient positive emotional charge.

In 2012, following the results of the 2010/2011 TV season, REN TV channel received seven TEFI Award statuettes, five of them for achievements in information and analytics.

On 14 December 2012, the channel joined the second multiplex of digital terrestrial television in Russia.

Since February 2012, REN TV dropped its roster of Russian television series in weekday prime time for unknown reasons, and their place in the schedule has been taken by pseudo-documentary, pseudoscientific and heavily biased films devoted to various versions and hypotheses of the modern world. Over time, they occupied most of the entire daily broadcast schedule. The channel's line-up on Sundays and public holidays began to consist of multi-hour marathons of TV series and films (including those from Sergey Selyanov's package: Brother, Brother 2, Sisters, Blind Man's Buff, cartoons PRODUCED BY "Melnitsa", etc.) and documentaries covering almost the entire day. A tendency to increase the amount of entertainment programs emerged — Green Cucumber, Clean Job, Hell's Kitchen, etc. One of the few premieres of a socio-political nature is the talk show Stop Being Silent! with Tigran Keosayan. which was quickly removed from schedule after two months on air, because it did not have high ratings. The Independent Investigation program with Nikolai Nikolaev in the genre of investigative journalism, which was resumed after the closure of four TV channels, did not last long. Until the end of 2013, the Ukrainian comedy show Evening Quarter (which starred future Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, later known for his resistance to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine) was periodically repeated on the Inter and 1+1 channels; at the same time, there were cases when some statements of the team members regarding Viktor Yanukovych and his entourage were cut off on Ukrainian TV channels, but were shown in Russia.

International versions and availability

Ukraine

In Ukraine there was a full relay of the channel (including commercials) until 2014, excluding sports broadcasts and erotic programs (during which periods, its signal was suspended). The channel was distributed by the SonaR company from Dnipropetrovsk. In 2008 was suspended alongside Channel One Russia, RTR-Planeta, NTV Mir and TV Center International, after the problems were solved, REN TV resumed operations. In the 2000s and 2010s, REN TV was relayed terrestrially on the following channels:

7 Kanal (Kharkiv)

34 Kanal (Dnipro)

Aleks (Zaporizhzhya)

ART (Odesa)

EKTA (Brovary)

Zhitomirskaya OGTRK (Zhytomyr)

IRTA (Luhansk)

Nash Gorod (Brovary)

Odessa-Plyus (Odessa) (1 January—15 November 2002)

Profit (Kharkiv)

Rudana (Kryvyi Rih)

Sigma (Mariupol)

ТВ-7 (Mariupol)

Ukraine (Donetsk)

Chernomorskaya TRK (ARC)

On 24 July 2014, the National Television and Radio Council decided to ban two Russian television channels that continued news in its output, among them REN TV, as it did not follow the requisites of the European Convention on Transnational Television and Part 1 of Article 42 of the Ukrainian law "On Television and Radio Broadcasting".

In June 2022, broadcasts resumed in parts of Kherson Oblast that were captured by Russia, alongside the appearance of other national channels from the Russian multiplexes.

Belarus

Since 1 January 2001, REN TV's programs are relayed by Capital TV.

Baltics

REN TV broadcast to the three Baltic countries until 2005. After that, a new REN TV Baltic channel with a British license was created. It ceased relaying REN TV programs on 10 February 2021.

Moldova

REN TV was relayed in Moldova until 6 January 2009, the ban was due to several of its original productions lacking rights outside of Russia. In December 2012, Teleproiect SRL obtained a license, creating a new channel, REN Moldova, in 2013.

Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan, the channel was banned in 2004 due to the coverage of the situation in the country.

India

Although the channel never directly catered to India, it was available in the clear via satellite and redistributed to cable television companies. The channel caused a minor scandal in 2004, when its Saturday night block of erotic programming attracted local audiences, similar to what happened to TV-6, which India banned when the channel was still operational.

Controversies

News coverage

In November 2005 REN TV fired Olga Romanova, the anchor of its daily 24 news flagship. Despite much publicity around the incident, her independent manner of reporting was continued by Marianna Maksimovskaya, formerly an anchor and news presenter for Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV Station. Maksimovskaya was in charge of news broadcasts on REN TV until 2014, when she was fired. Due to her activities, the channel was arguably Russia's only major TV outlet with liberal views, discussing the problem of state censorship and showing interviews with leaders of the political fringe (including Other Russia).

Prior to her departure from the channel, Romanova had told the Radio Free Europe on 25 November 2005 that the channel's head, Alexander Ordzhonikidze had pulled two recent stories for, she felt, political reasons. One censored item had covered an investigation into Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov's son's involvement in a road accident in which a woman died. Romanova spoken about the alleged censorship on Ekho Moskvy radio on 23 November 2005 – and the next day Ordzhonikidze barred from entering the channel's building. A second 'banned item had been about the building in central Moscow of a US$15 million church and clock tower by Zurab Tsereteli, the International Press Institute noted in its report on 2005.

Ordzhonikidze said in an interview for Echo of Moscow radio station that REN's news output had low ratings and management had decided to try other anchors on the evening newscasts.

In solidarity with Romanova, several of her journalist colleagues quit the channel in December 2005. Head of news and deputy channel director, Yelena Fedorova, told Radio Liberty's Russian Service (Radio Svoboda) why she had resigned.

Accusations of pseudoscience

REN TV has been accused of combining pieces of scientific shows and interviews to produce pseudoscientific "documentaries". In 2015, REN TV's documentaries were awarded "the most harmful pseudoscientific project (for spreading of myths, delusions and superstitions)" antiprize by the Ministry of Education and Science for propaganda of conspiracy theories and mistrust for science.

In October 2024, REN TV reported fictitious birds with human testicles, showing images generated using Midjourney that became an internet meme in early 2024. The report referred to the non-existent species as the "Madagascar egg-carrying thrush" and claimed that the bird's "pouches" were used for gestation and that they could also grow on its back. Ornithologist and Moscow State University professor Irina Boehme claimed to have found the information about the bird in an online article. Hi-Tech Mail suspected that REN TV editors erroneously reported the fictitious species without verifying the source. The report was ridiculed on social media.

Scheduled content

Current

News, author-based and morning:

Novosti REN TV (Новости РЕН ТВ)

Emergency Call 112 (Экстренный вызов 112)

Dobrov On Air (Добров в эфире)

Program on Facts with Pyotr Marchenko (Итоговая программа с Петром Марченко)

A Joyful Good Morning! (Самое бодрое утро!, formerly Joyful Morning|/С бодрым утром!)

Entertainment, education and documentary programming:

In the Frame (В кадре)

War Secrets (Военная тайна)

The Most Shocking Hypotheses (Самые шокирующие гипотезы)

Chapman's Mysteries (Тайны Чапман, formerly Mysteries of the World with Anne Chapman/Тайны мира с Анной Чапман)

Mysteries of Humanity (Загадки человечества)

Unknown History (Неизвестная история)

Legends and Myths (Легенды и мифы)

A Moment in History (Момент в истории)

The Most Useful/Popular Program (Самая полезная/народная программа)

MinTrans (МинТранс)

How the World Works (Как устроен мир)

Incredibly Amazing Histories (Невероятно интересные истории, formerly IAH REN TV/НИИ РЕН ТВ and IAH: Guide/НИИ: Путеводитель)

Former

The company which produced several high-profile feature films, notably the Golden Lion-winning Vozvrashcheniye in 2003, is still a production house and has made much of the network's scheduled content, including numerous TV series:

Soldiers (Russian: Солдаты), following recruits drafted into the Russian Army for their mandatory year of military service. 16 seasons as of 2009.

Students (Russian: Студенты), following the social lives of several Moscow University for the Humanities students. (2005-2006)

Tourists (Russian: Туристы), following several couples on vacation on a beach resort in Turkey. (2005)

In the past, REN TV aired American TV series, taken from FOX and Sony Pictures Television, including:

Prison Break (as Побег) since September 4, 2006

Family Guy (as Гриффины)

Friends (as Друзья)

M*A*S*H (as МЭШ)

My Name Is Earl (as Меня зовут Эрл) since 2006

Supernatural (as Сверхъестественное) since September 2006

The 4400 (as 4400) since November 26, 2006

The Simpsons (as Симпсоны)

The X-Files (as Секретные материалы)

Jetix, children's adventure programming from Disney

Later purchased/licensed programming: