For the past 25 years, TV-2 has been a leading source of news and comment in Siberia. Source: TV-2.I still can’t get used to it. As I leave the TV-2 building, I pass an empty studio, an empty broadcasting room and some editing stations. At this time of day, everything used to be in full swing, with the evening edition of our “Rush Hour” programme getting ready to go on air. It was the busiest moment of the day. The producer would be chivvying the reporters, the technical team would be setting up the studio and the presenter would be in the makeup room. Phones would be ringing in the newsroom. Now it’s all quiet. The staff of the TV-2 website (all that remains of the company) is minimal — just a few people, and those on duty in the evening work from home.
This is how we are marking TV-2’s 25th birthday. We haven’t been on air for 18 months, shut down by the authorities in early 2015. Our last programmes went out on New Year’s Eve, and after our broadcasting licence ran out on 8 February we were dropped from the cable networks. More than 100 members of staff of the TV channel and other affiliated elements of our parent company TMG Holding were made redundant. Some people found jobs in other Tomsk media outlets; some left the city and others left the country; some changed their profession and some are still unemployed.
TV-2’s anniversary celebrations also coincided with the destruction of the editorial team at RBC agency, a bold and professional group of people that brought out a daily business paper and a monthly business magazine. As Andrei Loshak, a prominent journalist, commented: “the only indicator of the professionalism of any Russian media outlet today is having it closed down”. The end of TV-2 is a sign of the times, just as its birth was a sign of the post-Soviet times.
