You’re going to laugh. I’m laughing myself, because by now this really is starting to resemble a soap opera. The sad news reached me in faraway Krasnoyarsk. The program "Fight Club" on the TV Center channel has been canceled. Completely. The unique journalistic team (TM) (heh-heh, I never thought that nasty phrase could ever be applied to me) has been disbanded. A brief recap of previous episodes: 1. We struggled with it for a long time. 2. We made the program. We recorded a pilot. The pilot turned out very cool. 3. I was banned as the host. The pilot was not allowed on air. 4. I became editor-in-chief. 5. We shot three more episodes with other hosts. 6. The second episode (Kashin-Miloserdov) got TV Center’s best ratings of the day. 7. After a lot of back-and-forth, I was unbanned as the host. In the next episode, I was supposed to bask in the glow of TV fame. 8. All the TV criticism published about the show was generally favorable. 9. Then, over the course of three days, SOMETHING happened, and the show was instantly shut down. The already recorded episode about military conscription problems will not be aired. The TV Center people turned out to be jokers, and instead of the announced "Fight Club," they’ll air the program "The Street of Your Destiny" with Alexandra Buratayeva. As for the real reasons for the cancellation, all I know are conspiracy theories. But they’re so flattering to my political ego that I won’t talk about them, because you’ll say I made them up myself. We’re not going to make too much of a scandal out of this, ’cause: we weren’t the only ones hurt, and clearly we’re not the main victims; yellow_reporter and I certainly made a significant contribution to "FC," but in fairness it should be said that the format was invented by TV Center, the money was TV Center’s, and the production was theirs too. So if they want to shut it down, let them shut it down. It’s their business. What I really regret is that we didn’t manage to realize the symbiosis between the TV program and LiveJournal that we had planned. In the last episode, we already took the first step toward that by identifying everyone who asked questions as LJ users. Which, by the way, completely baffled TV Center’s regular viewers—women over 55. Let me also brag that we managed to create a small sensation: the audience demographics showed that 20% of our viewers were between 16 and 25 years old. That is very unusual for a political talk show. Very. And doubly unusual for TV Center. My paranoid mind tells me that this success of ours became one of the nails in our coffin. In any case, thanks to everyone who took part in the project, joined our community, came to the tapings, asked questions, wrote reviews, and so on. To the entire "FC" film crew, the channel’s political editorial staff, and TV Center management, I send rays of sympathy. It was a pleasure working with you. And let’s remember one thing: the Forces of Good will win anyway. Glory to Russia! I reread what I wrote. It came out kind of syrupy. Like, mwah, love you all. So let me add a bit of brutality and more real-life truth: I** SEE THAT SOME OF THESE BASTARDS HERE THINK THEY’LL BE IN POWER FOREVER. BUT THAT MAY BE A DELUSION. WE WILL NOT FORGET! WE WILL NOT FORGIVE!**