Overall, I’m satisfied with yesterday’s debate — for me, it wasn’t just the debate itself, but also an organizational and political effort.
We had several goals:
To pull all of this together, within our means, in a way that didn’t look completely terrible.
To test whether we had the technical and logistical capacity for such a complex project.
To demonstrate the greatest possible openness and readiness for political debate.
To agree on all the terms and rules so there would be no scandal and everything would be as fair as possible.
To promote the Navalny.Live channel.
To make the livestream available to everyone who wanted to carry it.
To reach a large audience and have at least 100,000 people watching live at the same time.
And, personally, to come across as more convincing in the debate.
Now I have to read “analysts’ opinions” about what strategic plan we supposedly had for this debate, aimed at winning over nationalist voters and so on. We’re all having a good laugh about that here.
Let me repeat once again: never listen to “analysts’ opinions.” Things are always a hundred times simpler.
This was a sudden, unplanned, urgent, and accidental project that happened for two reasons: a) it would be wrong for a candidate to refuse a challenge to this kind of debate; b) we want to make debates a regular project, and we needed to understand how all of this works. We’re not actually a real TV channel, after all.
Yesterday, after the debate, I asked Strelkov whose idea it had been, because all of Facebook had exploded with conspiracy theories.
He said, quite sincerely, it seemed to me: I came up with it all myself.
I have no doubt that’s exactly how it was.
In the end:
Across all broadcasting channels (us, TV Rain, Reuters, Roy, etc.), more than 150,000 people were watching the debate simultaneously at its peak.
The most important thing is retention. According to our statistics, the average viewer started watching and stayed for more than an hour.
The video stayed at the top of YouTube’s trending list all night, and it’s still in second place now:
Already now, the number of views on the two main platforms is over a million:
We built the studio in the office by, damn it, covering the windows with trash bags and tape. The picture obviously wasn’t perfect, no point pretending otherwise, but in terms of value for money it was quite decent.
We put together an excellent team and managed to do everything well on the technical side. Nothing crashed, nobody lost sound, the lights didn’t go out, and the stream ran smoothly for everyone.
Huge, huge thanks to everyone who took part in the project and stayed up all night the day before.
We found a very high-profile, professional moderator. Many thanks to Mikhail Zygar for his help.
We demonstrated that very openness and readiness for debate. This is extremely important to us, and we keep repeating: look at the other campaign headquarters and the other candidates. Are they doing anything like this? Do they have debates, unscripted questions, and unmoderated discussion? Exactly: no, and they never have. So support us. Come volunteer with us and send us donations.
We managed to agree on the rules with the other side (though there were disputes and difficult moments), and I’m sure no one has the slightest doubt that the debate was conducted completely fairly and that neither side had any advantage.
It’s hard to judge myself (I still haven’t rewatched the broadcast), but I do think I was more convincing — at least for the kind of argument where it’s obvious as hell that nobody is going to change anyone’s mind. At the very least, I said what I planned to say, and in the right order. I tried to cut the number of “uhhh” and “aaah” by about 50 percent from my usual level.
I’d be grateful for feedback, useful advice, critical comments, and so on — what worked and what didn’t.
And in general, our whole team would be glad to hear your thoughts on everything: the studio, the format, the moderator, the length, the rules, and so on.
We can see that interest in debates — and in a normal political talk show in general, rather than the hellscape on Channel One (Russia’s main state TV channel) — is enormous.
We’ve learned that this is a very, very labor-intensive and complicated process. And not a cheap one, by the way.
So the more advice, the better.
Once again, many thanks to everyone involved.