Founding TNT was founded in September 1997 as part of the Media-Most holding company. Its general director was Sergei Skvortsov, appointed by Media-Most first deputy chairman Igor Malashenko (who had launched World war, Russia's first non-state TV network, a year before). The new channel initially focused on regional viewers. Designed to provide family entertainment, its goal was to attract the widest possible audience. TNT broadcast feature films,
documentaries, series (including
soap operas),
talk and
game shows, videos of Russian and foreign musicians, musical programs (including concerts by
bardic musicians),
comedy,
news, children's entertainment and educational programs, and
cartoons. Within its first five years, sports programs were also frequently shown. The
NTV Plus satellite service participated in the channel's founding. TNT was intended to compete with
STS and
NTV, presenting little-known videos from European and American companies.
Streets of Broken Lights was a long-running series about the everyday life of the
Russian police. The channel is delivered via
Intelsat 604 (60° E) for European Russia in
digital format and
Intelsat 704 (64° E) for eastern Russia; the latter used an
analog format for its first six months. On January 1, 1998, TNT began broadcasting. In Moscow, it operated on UHF channel 35, which had been used in 1996-1997 by the
VGTRK-owned
Meteor-Sport, Russia's first (and failed) sports channel, whose frequency was acquired by Media-Most in the summer of 1997 to broadcast an experimental service without a definitive format.
1998–1999 Streets of Broken Lights gave TNT a stable but comparatively small (2–3 percent) audience during its first year of broadcasting. By mid-1998, the channel could be seen in 100 Russian cities. Inspired by
Broken Lights success, channel executives ordered another series:
National Security Agent, about the adventures of an
FSB agent. It premiered on January 1, 1999, but failed to duplicate the first series' success. In March 1999, Sergei Skvortsov left NTV-Holding and Pavel Korchagin became TNT's general director. The channel had a production system for its own series and a talk show with
Vladimir Solovyov (a newcomer to television), and presented television premieres of
blockbuster films. It was apolitical, there was no clear concept, its target audience was not defined, and its management assigned no special tasks; therefore, its development was unlikely.
2000–2001 In June 2000, TNT began a news program in the Moscow region.
Today in the Capital was produced by NTV and, according to Skvortsov, was intended for broadcast throughout Russia: "Our city's news will be interesting in any city". Its staff consisted of young NTV correspondents and students and recent graduates of the
MSU Faculty of Journalism. On August 27, 2000, after a fire at the
Ostankino Tower, TNT was one of the few channels which remained on the air and temporarily allocated part of its airtime to NTV channel for its news program
Today. At this time, TNT ranked fourth among Moscow TV channels. In 2000–2001, the channel and Media-Most holdings (
NTV,
NTV Plus, and the publisher Seven Days) was on the brink of liquidation. During the spring of 2001, while NTV ownership was changing, TNT broadcast NTV programs. After the seizure and redistribution of NTV, most of its journalists moved to TNT until
Boris Berezovsky proposed
Yevgeny Kiselyov to head
TV-6. After some of its journalists moved to TV-6, TNT changed directors; Pavel Korchagin went to TV-6, and Andrey Skutin became general director. In November 2001, TNT became part of
Gazprom-Media.
2002–2005 TNT targeted a wide range of viewers before the 2002–03 season, broadcasting documentaries, cartoons, and series. During the fall of 2002 a sports program, created with
NTV Plus Sport, was added to TNT's schedule. The channel, unable to purchase (or produce) blockbusters, focused on new and less-expensive programming. This approach was successful, and TNT's audience increased from 2.7 to 5.4 percent by the end of 2002. The ratings increase was primarily due to the addition of
Okna, a
tabloid talk show hosted by
Dmitry Nagiyev, and several other programs launched by a new team of managers led by former STS CEO Roman Petrenko. TNT aired
Today’s Day, its last old-regime show (whose ratings had fallen precipitously) for the last time on November 15, 2002. At the end of 2002 the channel adopted a new slogan ("TNT helps you!"), describing itself as "a unique TV channel that not only entertains, but helps you". On February 1, 2003, TNT overhauled its schedule. One of the first programs produced with the new concept was
Moscow: Instructions for Proper Use, which replaced
Today’s Day. TNT prioritized reality shows and a variety of alternative-entertainment programs. The closed joint-stock company TNT-Teleset became an
open one. With the direct participation of Roman Petrenko and Dmitry Troitsky, a number of low-rated programs were replaced with original productions:
The Forbidden Zone,
The Famine,
Reparation School,
The Taxi,
The Child Robot,
Big Brother,
Dom, and
Dom-2. The latter jump-started the careers of hosts
Ksenia Sobchak,
Kseniya Borodina and
Olga Buzova: On September 1, 2003, the animated block
Nickelodeon on TNT began airing during the day. That month TNT premiered
Sasha + Masha, a comedy series which became one of the channel's highest-rated shows. Five seasons were produced until September 2005, when it was rerun. TNT's
Comedy Club, featuring
stand-up comedy, was inspired by members
KVN New Armenians team:
Comedy Club showcases TNT's stable of resident TV comedians, popularizing a "new kind of humor".
2006–2007 The 2006–07 season began not in September but in July, hoping to attract an over-30 audience watching TV at their summer cottages. To expand its reality-show reputation, TNT executives introduced a number of new programs:
The Candidate (with
Vladimir Potanin),
Nanny To the Rescue,
Former Wives Club,
Wife Exchange, and
A Different Life. According to former director-general Roman Petrenko, TNT "had studied almost the entire experience of the TV companies of all around the world and picked up the ideas seeming to have a greater potential, as well as hiring British producers":
Happy Together, an adaptation of the American sitcom
Married... with Children, premiered in March 2006. Running for seven years, it was one of TNT's most successful sitcoms.
Nasha Russia, a
sketch comedy series based on
Little Britain and starring
Mikhail Galustyan and
Sergei Svetlakov, premiered on November 4, 2006. It was popular, and some of its characters (such as the
foreign workers Ravshan and Dzhamshut) became national symbols. After running for five seasons, in 2016 (five years after the end of the original series) it was followed by a
spin-off:
The Bearded Guy. Understand and Forgive, developing one of
Nasha Russia storylines and starring
Mikhail Galustyan as unlucky
Ryazan guard Sashka Borodach. Galustyan's character became symbolic of a negligent worker. Also in November 2006, TNT's on-air style was updated. The channel began promoting the people directly (or indirectly) connected with it: hosts, actors in series, participants in
Dom-2 and
Comedy Club comedians. Clips and advertisements with the slogans "TNT about life. TNT about love. TNT for fun" were shown in a month-long campaign throughout Russia. Competitions between comedians and stand-up teams, a new TV format, began in 2007.
Laughter Without Rules, from the producers of
Comedy Club, premiered in April. Young comedians competed for large cash prizes, with the winner moving on to
A Crazy League.
Laughter Without Rules lasted until the December 2009 death of host
Vladimir Turchinsky. In August 2010, the show was revived as
Comedy Battle and dedicated to Turchinsky. It continued until the end of 2016, and was replaced the following year by
Open Mic. In 2007, TNT received the Best TV Channel of the Year award at the Russian Entertainment Awards.
2008–2009 At the beginning of 2008, TNT's most successful reality shows were
Dom-2 and
Bitva extrasensov, based on ''Britain's Psychic Challenge''. The producers lacked "raw material", because the Russian film industry does not produce blockbusters comparable to Hollywood's. The film parodies the Russian movies
Night Watch,
The 9th Company,
Shadowboxing and
Bimmer, the foreign films
Star Wars,
The Matrix,
Pirates of the Caribbean and
Bruce Almighty and the Russian television series
Brigada and
The Truckers. With a budget of $5 million (and an equal amount spent on advertising),
The Best Movie earned over $30 million at the box office and set the first-weekend record for Russia and the CIS countries ($19.2 million).
The Best Movie 2 was released a year later, followed by
The Best Movie 3-De in January 2011; both starred Kharlamov. Produced by Monumental Pictures, their runs followed the first film's: a good start, a collapse during the second week and some profit at the end. TNT targeted young audiences in 2008.
Univer, a sitcom about students living in a Moscow dormitory, premiered on August 25. The series, created and produced by
Semyon Slepakov and Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov, was directed by
Pyotr Tochilin (director of
Khottabych):
Love in a District, a series about young people belonging to different social groups, premiered on December 19 and ran for two seasons.
Univer was more successful and, with its two-season sequel
Univer. New Dorm, has produced over 500 episodes.
SashaTanya, another
Univer spin-off about a couple from the original series, premiered in 2013 and was also successful.
Made in Woman (soon renamed
Comedy Woman), inspired by the all-male
Comedy Club, premiered at the end of 2008 and was conceived in 2006 by
KVN Moscow Megapolis team member Natalia Yeprikyan. Other women from
KVN who were involved in the show were Elena Borshcheva, Ekaterina Skulkina, Ekaterina Barnabas, Ekaterina Baranova,
Marina Kravets, Maria Kravchenko, Polina Sibagatullina, Tatyana Morozova, Natalia Medvedeva, and Marina Bochkareva.
Egor Druzhinin was an occasional host.
Barvikha, a
comedy-drama about school life in an
elite cottage community, premiered in fall 2009. Its creators described it as a "new-generation series" and "cinematic" (the series was filmed in
1080p), with carefully written dialogue – the writers visited Barvikha – and good performances. The series raised questions about the interaction of children with others from families with a different social status. Two seasons were filmed (one 20 episodes and the other 15), and the second season was broadcast in 2011 as
Bright Young Things: Barvikha 2. TNT participated in 2009's Year of the Young, supporting the youth-volunteer Train of Youth and broadcasting over 500
public service announcements. The channel supported 12 information campaigns about
healthy lifestyles, the
HIV prevention, combating
tobacco and other
addiction, supporting
blood donation and
inclusive education, and counteracting
human trafficking. A year earlier, TNT was an information sponsor of the Year of the Family and produced
election videos with the slogan "Don't be a vegetable - vote!" In November 2009, TNT received an award from the Coalition of Nonprofit Organizations for "Socially Responsible Media: Putting Social Advertising on the Air".
2010–2011 Alexander Dulerain became TNT's general producer of the TNT in 2010, replacing Dmitri Troitsky (who left the channel). The channel premiered two sitcoms: "
The Interns" in March and
The Swell Guys in November.
Interns writer Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov graduated from the
South Ural State Medical University. His experiences inspired the series: Like
Univer,
The Interns did not copy American sitcoms. In the magazine
The Art of Cinema, Olga Ganzhara agrees with star
Ivan Okhlobystin that
The Interns is more than a traditional situational comedy; it "has discovered a new genre – having something in common with a classic kind of TV series and a sitcom based on an incredible playwriting material".
The Interns was filmed like a "full-length movie", with rehearsals, multiple takes, a
Red One camera, and no
laugh track. reminiscent of
Hugh Laurie's portrayal of
Gregory House. Okhlobystin's character, however, is purely Russian: full of love and respect for human suffering. residents, is part of the
Swell Guys title sequence. The sign is on the river called
Kama, near the Perm I rail station.
Swell Guys, a reality series, premiered on November 8, 2010, and finished second in the ratings (after
The Interns). It was conceived by Anton Zaitsev, a founder of Good Story Media and member of the
KVN Parma team. Directed by Jeanne Kadnikova, the series starred Nikolai Naumov.
Swell Guys was set and filmed in
Perm. Kolyan (Naumov), known to the police, is caught committing a petty theft; to avoid jail, he agrees to participate in a reality show. A camera operator follows him everywhere (filming his life, work and friends), and his only requirement is to live honestly. The series featured a gallery of city characters: bright young people, students, party girls, marginalized people, traders, hard workers, managers, businessmen, soldiers, policemen, criminals, and "the guys" (Kolyan and his friends). After several months, the entire cast became known in Perm and throughout Russia. Actor
Konstantin Khabensky, It was accepted by five members of the
Swell Guys team: Anton Zaitsev, Zhanna Kadnikova, producer Yuri Ovchinnikov, director Sergei Dolgushin, and star Nikolai Naumov. The most successful 2011 premiere was
Zaitsev + 1, a sitcom about a clumsy student with a
split personality. Created by Denis Kosyakov, Sasha Zaitsev and his
alter ego Fedor were played by Philip Kotov and
Mikhail Galustyan. The first episode, aired on April 11, had a 30.4-percent share of the 18–32 demographic; that night, TNT was the most-watched channel from 20:30 to 21:00. The series was watched by 16 percent of viewers from six to 54 years old.
Gérard Depardieu guest-starred in season three: TNT executives promised to attract more top foreign actors for their programs. On November 2, the
Federal Antimonopoly Service included TNT on its list of federal channels and published its ratings for national and regional advertising. The channel's national share was in fifth place, at 9.3 percent.
2012–2013 On February 6, 2012, TNT began its Rainbow TV service on the ABS-1 satellite in the UTC+2 time zone. It was discontinued on December 5, 2014. After the success of
Univer and
Swell Guys, a sitcom entitled
Girrrls premiered in April 2012. The series was about four girls from
Saratov who live in a Moscow apartment: The series was filmed in Moscow with local actors, and the choice of Saratov as the girls’ hometown was due to the city's dialect. It ran for five seasons, with the sixth scheduled for fall 2017. TNT was included in Russian digital television's second multiplex set on December 14, 2012.
Through my Eyes, a
point-of-view series, premiered on January 27, 2013. Its
narrative is nonlinear, and the POV filming reveals a character's personality and history. Created by Ilya Kulikov and directed by Zaur Bolotayev, it was advertised as a "movie series":
Fox Television Studios bought the rights for an American adaptation with the same name, and it was announced that filming had begun. It was produced by
Lawrence Bender, a frequent collaborator with
Quentin Tarantino. TNT considered and dismissed the possibility of a second season of
Through my Eyes, so the series has 19 episodes and an open ending. Roman Petrenko became chairman of the TNT-TeleNet board of directors and Igor Goichberg became TNT's general director in July 2013.
2014 At the end of January 2014, Igor Mishin replaced Igor Goyhberg as TNT's general director. The channel purchased
Swell Guys producer Good Story Media, which had primarily produced for STS. Although the purchase price was not announced, analysts estimated it at $50 million; according to
Kommersant, a total of about $400 million was spent on Comedy Club Productions (in 2012) and Good Story Media.
P. E. Teacher, starring
Dmitry Nagiyev as Oleg Evgenevich Fomin ("Foma", a reformed criminal who is forced to get a job as a gym teacher), premiered in April. Its first episode was watched by 31.8 percent of Moscow viewers aged 14 to 44, a record for the channel. The Moscow share of viewers aged 6 to 54 was 22.6 percent, and 23.8 percent throughout Russia. Its 18–30 share was 41.8 percent in Moscow, and 36 percent in the rest of the country. According to
TNS Gallup, the series was the fifth-most-popular program on Russian television (with a rating of five percent and a share of 12.7 percent) in April 2014. The main reasons for its success (unexpected even by the series' creators) and the intersection of two eras: the criminal 1990s and the present: His students are not afraid of him, and they are teaching each other. Although Foma's path is rough, he slowly and painfully improves.
P. E. Teacher was included on
Afisha magazine's list of top-10 Russian TV series of 2014. It received Best Comedy TV Series and Best Screenplay awards from the Association of Producers of Cinema and Television in 2014, and a
TEFI nomination for Best Sitcom in 2015. Its fourth-season premiere was scheduled for the end of June 2017.
Sweet Life is a series produced by Andrei Dzhunkovsky about a
single mother (Marta Nosova), a
go-go dancer from
Perm. After spurning the governor's son, Sasha acquires dangerous enemies, alienates her friends (including her sweetheart), leaves her child with her grandmother and goes to Moscow in the hope of vanishing. In the capital city, she has relationships with six successful 30-year-old men. Because of adult situations and
mat (obscene language), two versions of the series were produced: one for
prime time and an
uncensored version for late night. It was the first Russian series to premiere on the
Internet two weeks before being broadcast; some episodes of
Swell Guys appeared on the Internet several hours before their TV premiere to attract an audience. Amediateka (a paid video service) bought the rights to the series, and made all six uncensored first-season episodes available on May 15, 2014. The cost was not disclosed:
Sweet Life was the first domestic series shown by Amediateka. It was the service's second-most-popular show, after the first season of
Game of Thrones. During its first two weeks,
Sweet Life was seen by almost 11,000 viewers.
Dancing, based on
So You Think You Can Dance, premiered in August. Contestants competed for the title of the best dancer in Russia and a top prize of
₽3 million. The show was produced by Comedy Club Productions, which had produced TNT's
Dancing Without Rules in 2008. It was not the first popular dance program on Russian television;
Russia-1 premiered
Dancing with the Stars in 2006 and
Big Dancing in 2013, and
Channel One Russia aired
Dance! in 2015. According to music critic Boris Barabanov,
Dancing had the greatest audience impact:
Chernobyl: Zone of Exclusion, directed by
Anders Banke, was influenced by
Through My Eyes. What begins as a
road movie becomes a mystical thriller, an action film and a
disaster film. The first-season suggests an
alternate history in which the
Soviet Union avoids
dissolution and the
US loses its
superpower status. The series was the first in Russia to be shown in cinemas before its TV premiere. All eight first-season episodes were previewed on September 24, 2014, at the October Cinema in Moscow for an audience of show-business figures. The season was later previewed in 18 Russian cities:
Saint Petersburg,
Perm,
Krasnoyarsk,
Yekaterinburg,
Vladivostok,
Kemerovo,
Novosibirsk,
Saratov,
Irkutsk,
Izhevsk,
Omsk,
Ulyanovsk,
Tula,
Barnaul,
Tomsk,
Ufa,
Chelyabinsk and
Voronezh.
Chernobyl: Zone of Exclusion received good ratings; its premiere had a nationwide 28.4-percent share of the age 14–44 audience (29.9 percent in Moscow), and its nationwide 18–30 share was 34.9 percent (40.4 percent in Moscow). In the first week after the placement of the series on
Rutube, it had a record 6.1 million views (1.6 million more than the first episode of
P. E. Teacher, the previous record-holder. With
P. E. Teacher,
Chernobyl was included on
Afisha 2014 list of 10 best Russian series The TNT-Comedy channel was launched on September 1, replacing the satellite Comedy TV channel.
2015 Law of the Stone Jungle, a series about gangsters and
hipsters, premiered in March 2015. The series was directed by Ivan Burlakov, in his directing debut. According to
Gazeta.Ru reporter Yaroslav Zabaluev, it is an "ingenious show about former students who decide to become gangsters".
Law of the Stone Jungle was inspired by
Danny Boyle's
Trainspotting,
Guy Ritchie's
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the films of
Quentin Tarantino and
Robert Rodriguez, and the British teenage series
Misfits and
Skins. The pilot episode of
Law of the Stone Jungle had a nationwide age 14–44 share of 18.8 percent (12.8 percent in Moscow). Its 18–30 Moscow share was 25 percent. After the success of
Swell Guys and
P. E. Teacher, Anton Shchukin produced a more-traditional sitcom:
A Private Security Agency. The series' characters, five hapless employees of the Cedrus security agency who are guarding the Nightingale shopping center, get into awkward situations due to their naiveté and honesty. Star Sergei Styopin said that he did not know what aspects of the series are fictional. According to Shchukin, he intended to depict the humor in the natural and habitual. The series ran for two seasons. Two series dealt with sex.
Infidelity, starring
Elena Lyadova, was a 16-part series about
adultery in which Asya (Lyadova) and her husband each have three lovers; its theme was that people are not what they seem. Its pilot premiere had a nationwide age 18–30 share of 25 percent. Lyadova and director
Vadim Perelman received 2016
TEFI awards, and the series was nominated for Best TV Movie/Series. Youth sitcom
The Sex-Obsessed, or Love is Evil was created by Comedy Club resident
Semyon Slepakov, written by Irina Denezhkina (author of the novel
Let Me!) and directed by Boris Khlebnikov.
2016 On January 1, 2016, TNT4 replaced the
2×2 channel and began broadcasting TNT reruns and TNT-Comedy programs. who left on June 15. TNT premiered
Island, a reality show spoofing
Dom-2, on February 8. Four men and four women reach a deserted island on which TV cameras are hidden. On the first day, the film crew "dies" in a yacht explosion. The show's participants, falsely convinced that millions of viewers are watching them, rush to produce the show and organize
SMS voting. Like the participants in
Dom-2, they pair off and begin relationships. They are accompanied by a local resident who does not speak their language and whom they do not understand. There are a number of mocking references to
Dom-2 and other TNT programs. Igor Karev of Gazeta.ru recommended
Island to fans of
Interns and those who "have always dreamed of watching
Dom-2, but hesitated to do so." The series' success spawned a second season, followed by a third scheduled for 2018.
Olga, starring Yana Troyanova, was a comedy drama which outdid
Interns and
P. E. Teacher in popularity among its target nationwide 14–44 audience in September. Its ratings doubled TNT's average daily audience.
The Bearded Guy: Understand and Forgive was based on
Nasha Russia. Grigory Constantinople's four-episode
black comedy,
A Drunken Firm, starred
Mikhail Yefremov,
Elizaveta Boyarskaia,
Anna Mikhalkova and
Marat Basharov. It received the Best TV Film/Series award from the Association of Producers of Cinema and Television, and Efremov received the Best Actor award. On December 27, TNT began broadcasting in
HD.
2017 The Adaptation, a comedy series, premiered in February. The
Central Intelligence Agency conducts a secret operation, Rosilda, to gather information about Russian technology for gas production. The CIA's best agent, Ashton Ivey, infiltrates
Gazprom Dobycha YANAO in
Noyabrsk as Russian engineer Oleg Menshov. He meets Marina and Valera on the way to Noyabrsk, who complicates his work. The series stars
Leonid Bichevin and
Peter Jacobson. Although it begins with an announcement that the plot is "imaginary", the authors say that it is based on some fact.
The Philological Faculty, directed by Fedor Stukov, premiered in April. An attempt to repeat the success of
Univer, it examines the issue that Russian
philological faculties teach mostly women; at a university, three men find themselves among a lot of women. Singer and humorist
Efim Shifrin was invited to play the teacher. Series expected in 2017 were Zhora Kryzhovnikov's
Phone DiCaprio,
The Cultural Year with
Fyodor Bondarchuk,
Home Confinement with
Pavel Derevyanko,
Polar-17 with
Mikhail Porechenkov and
Alexander Bashirov,
The Mounted Police with
Arthur Smolyaninov,
Big Cheese with Roman Popov, and
The Light from Another World. TNT also planned to premiere
Bonus, a rap musical by
Valeriya Gai Germanika. Other programs were
Bitva extrasensov,
Dances,
Bachelor and
Dom-2. Upcoming Comedy Club productions were
HB,
Stand Up,
Comedy Woman,
Comedy Club,
Comedy Battle,
Improvisation,
Once in Russia,
Love Is and
Open Microphone. ==References==