The fact that I’m writing this post about the first three months of our strange TV channel in a squared notebook is a good example of the difficult fate that can await new media projects in Russia built on a simple idea: tell the truth, no censorship.
Yes, our live-streaming channel Navalny Live is only 3 months old, although it already feels to me as if it has been with us 20 times longer.
So, judging by the results of the first quarter, I can say that I’m very pleased and consider Navalny Live one of our most successful projects.
When we were starting out, I was already thinking up words to encourage Sobol and Lyaskin. The channel began with their morning broadcasts, and by my estimates, 6,000 to 15,000 views per show would have been an excellent result.
In fact, I would still consider those numbers good—after all, you can count on one hand the number of outlets that publish articles with more than 20,000 reads. And Russia’s most popular journalists get 30,000 to 40,000 reads on their own channels.
So 15,000 for non-professional hosts of a morning show on a non-professional channel with a shoestring budget—that’s #success.
With Oksana Baulina, the channel’s producer, I dreamily set a goal of 100,000 views per week.
After three months, we are at 2,911,280.25 views per week (the average over the last 4 weeks), with an average viewing time of 13 minutes 10 seconds.
The channel has 362,000 subscribers.
The morning show “Cactus” rarely gets fewer than 100,000 views.
We have 7 regular shows on the channel.
“Cactus”, hosted in turn by Lyubov Sobol and Nikolai Lyaskin, airs 5 times a week at 9:00 a.m. on weekdays.
“It Will Get Worse”, hosted by Mediazona editor-in-chief Sergei Smirnov, airs on Wednesdays at 1:12 p.m.
“Where’s the Money”, hosted by Vladimir Milov, airs on Thursdays at 4:00 p.m.
“Cloud”, hosted by Leonid Volkov, airs on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m.
Volkov talks about campaign news every Wednesday at 6:00 p.m.
“Law School”, hosted by the head of our legal department, Ivan Zhdanov, airs on Tuesdays at 5:00 p.m.
My show “Navalny at 20:18” airs on Thursdays—at 8:18 p.m.
Our top 5 most popular broadcasts:
#DimonWillAnswer #March26 — 4,736,620 views #WeDemandAnswers #June12 — 2,175,802 views Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #002 — 1,774,822 views Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #003 — 1,563,152 views Navalny at 20:18. Broadcast #004 — 1,178,565 views
The main thing we’ve learned over these three months is that anything can be done. It would seem: what do we have to do with television? Nothing will work. But as the saying goes, the eyes are afraid, but the hands do the work. Censorship, self-censorship, and fear have cleared out the information space so thoroughly that the ability to call things by their proper names has become a hundred times more important than specialized education and experience.
We’ll keep growing and launching new programs. Thank you to all our subscribers and to the donors of ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation).
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