Yesterday I was a guest on the live broadcast of Vyacheslav Maltsev’s famous Artpodgotovka. Thanks to his victory in the primaries, he is now second on the PARNAS party list.
It was very interesting to take part. Maltsev’s program, and the broader movement around him, are a very interesting phenomenon. He has no connection to Moscow’s political insider scene and does not seem especially sophisticated when it comes to technology. Yet he has managed to organize inexpensive but effective nationwide broadcasting. Every day he goes live with a 90-minute program watched by 100,000 to 150,000 people—an audience comparable to that of a national radio station.
All of this costs almost nothing, yet it gives him a stable channel for reaching people. You may say 150,000 is not that much. Fine—then name a political party that interacts daily with 150,000 supporters/viewers.
YABLOKO and PARNAS have websites that get a couple of thousand visitors a day. Then there are Facebook pages—Yavlinsky’s is the biggest, with 52,000 likes. Even the parliamentary parties, with budgets of hundreds of millions of rubles, do not have a communication channel like this.
Most importantly, it is completely uncensored. Maltsev says whatever he wants, attacks the authorities in blunt terms, and no one in the Presidential Administration (the Kremlin’s executive office) can shut him down.
This is very interesting.
I have noticed that some people in Moscow have a snobbish attitude toward Maltsev and his channel, and that is a mistake. He has achieved what editorial teams with dozens of journalists cannot, which means his experience should be studied and put into practice. The goal should be to make the work cheaper, rather than keep running to oligarchs with budget estimates showing enormous sums.
We are considering launching a similar channel ourselves. I could not manage doing it every day, but once a week might be worth trying.
And do watch the broadcast—there are some interesting moments there, and answers to many questions.
My thanks to Vyacheslav and his team for inviting me onto the broadcast.
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