The progenitor of Russian information broadcasting: 55 years of the Vremya program

Exactly 55 years ago, on January 1, 1968, the first program "Vremya" went on the air, which was destined to become the main information program of the country for many years. Employees of the Main Editorial Board of Information of the Central Television of the USSR, who witnessed and participated in the preparation of the very first episodes of the Vremya program, shared their memories with RT as part of the Unforgotten Stories project.

Irina Teryoshkina began working in the information office of Central Television in 1967.

She told RT how the Vremya program developed, how broadcasting began at the Ostankino television center, and who found the music for the weather forecast that sounded at the end of each episode.

"The Chamber of Weights and Measures"

- You have devoted your whole life to the editorial office of information and the Vremya program.

What is unique about this show?

— The Vremya program is a special edition.

As Anatoly Lysenko once said: “The Vremya program, if you like, is a chamber of weights and measures.”

Today, many leading positions on TV are occupied by people from the Vremya program.

Oleg Dobrodeev, Marina Nazarova, Konstantin Tochilin - all from there.

And not a single channel that has information broadcasting can do without the structure and technology worked out in this program from the first years.

Now we understand that we were making history back then.

Many correspondents working on the leading channels left from there.

"Time" is a philosophical unit, I think.

The first performance of Yuri Gagarin on television, in the studio "Relay News", April 17, 1961.
First row from left to right: Hero of the Soviet Union Alexei Maresyev, journalist Yuri Fokin, first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
In the second row, third from the left - announcer Yuri Levitan
RIA News
© I. Gmyrya

"News Relay"

- But the Vremya program itself did not appear from a blank sheet.

- Before the advent of the Vremya program in the 1960s, News was published, and at the end of each week there was the News Relay Race, which was the most popular among viewers.

This release consisted of stories and live broadcasts, which were five or six per broadcast.

Moreover, all this was done on equipment with which it was difficult to work with high quality.

The editors were Gennady Svishchenkov and Alla Aleksandrova, who bore the burden of timing.

Irina Turkina, who still works at Novosti on Channel One, was an assistant director at the News Relay.

But the ferment in the minds was all the time that at the end of the day you need to do the final transmission.

One of the initiators of such a release were journalists Leonid Zolotarevsky, who later distinguished himself as a military commander in Afghanistan, Iran Kazakova, Levan Dzaridze and chief director of the editorial office Alexei Petrochenko.

The Vremya program went on the air on January 1, 1968.

At first, she was very "loose".

There was no such program before us, so each release was like a trial.

Although the stories were already longer, they contained comments and attempts to analyze the events.

There was no clear layout of the issue yet, the alignment that came with time.

There was no “cap” (the initial screen saver of the TV program. -

), and even more so there was no recognizable music, which later became the hallmark of the Vremya program.

Chairman of the USSR State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting Nikolai Mesyatsev and the head of the delegation of the Ministry of Information of Burma, Lieutenant Colonel Tin Tun during a meeting in Moscow, July 2, 1969
RIA News
© M. Filimonov

- Who was the first head of the Vremya program?

- Nikolai Biryukov became the first editor-in-chief, and at that moment the entire USSR State Radio and Television was headed by a wonderful person Nikolai Mesyatsev.

But the Khrushchev thaw was on its way out.

Mesyatsev was removed, and the State Radio and Television was headed by Sergei Lapin, who came to follow the course of "increasing the leading role of the party."

His arrival was accompanied by the dismissal of several dozen people from the editorial office.

My colleagues and I also went under the knife: me, Elena Mironova, Natalya Chernova and other employees.

And at the same time, in 1970, Yuri Letunov was appointed editor-in-chief of the Vremya program.

It was he who built that impeccable technological system, according to the algorithm of which all information broadcasting of modern Russian television still works today.

When Letunov headed our editorial office, the first thing he decided to do was go through the list of those fired.

And then he told Lapin that he would clean up the ranks not earlier than in a year, when he himself would understand who was worth what.

By that time I had already got a job in a certain magazine, but still did not dare to take the work book to them.

And suddenly Letunov's secretary calls me and says that Yuri Alexandrovich really asks me to drive up to him at any time.

We talked for a long time about what - I don’t remember from excitement.

He wrote down my name on a piece of paper and said: “Look, I put it on my heart,” and put it in my inside pocket.

"Don't settle down, I'll get you back."

And so it happened.

He brought me back and some other hastily fired employees.

"Not a day without Leningrad"

- How did the Vremya program change with the arrival of Letunov?

- Before heading the editorial office of information, Letunov led the radio "Mayak".

We even had such a concept for a long time - "lighthouse school".

But we did not have a truly developed correspondent network.

Letunov led me and two other editors to a huge geographical map of the Soviet Union that hung on his wall, and set the task: "In three months, you must turn the whole country to face us."

And we started to create bureaus.

More than a hundred of them were opened in the country and several dozen abroad.

Corset editors were constantly in touch and supervised journalists in the field.

There was mutual work.

They offered something, at the same time they constantly carried out editorial tasks.

All trains, planes and steamships were required to deliver films to us.

The show took three hours.

Installation took an hour or more.

USSR State Radio and Television correspondent in Leningrad Sergey Andreev and editor of the Vremya program Irina Tereshkina, St. Petersburg, April 9, 2021
© From the personal archive

— What region was in the area of your attention?

— The scope of my personal activities included Leningrad, Pskov, Novgorod, the Baltic republics, Yaroslavl and Kostroma.

But Letunov paid special attention, of course, to the city on the Neva.

He believed that in the Vremya program there should not be a day without Leningrad.

Example.

Once Letunov stopped me in the corridor and began to scold me: “Again you don’t catch mice?

In Leningrad, Mankin sings, but the Soviet people don't know anything about it!

I will expel both you and Andreev.”

I call our correspondent in Leningrad, Sergei Andreev, and frantically try to find out who Mankin is.

After some reasoning, we guessed that we are talking about the tenor Yuri Marusin, who returned to Leningrad from the La Scala Theatre.

The next day, a report was aired on how the role of Lensky in the Kirov Theater was brilliantly performed by Yuri Marusin.

— Who else was in the editorial leadership at that time?

- Letunov had two deputies.

The first - Dmitry Biryukov - young, tall, handsome, cheerful, cheerful, namesake of the first editor-in-chief, not connected with him in any way.

And the second deputy - Leonid Khataevich - he brought from Mayak: small, ugly, driven out, but pathological clever.

When Letunov vented evil on him, Khataevich said: “Well, why are you, Yuri Alexandrovich, shouting at me?

I'll never be as tall and handsome as Dima."

Deputy editor-in-chief of the Vremya program Leonid Khataevich, 1970s
© From the personal archive

"Time forward!"

- The Vremya program had a strict order, which professionals call layout.

How did he develop?

- When Letunov headed the editorial office, he said that the Vremya program must contain something that people are very interested in.

Harvesting is a must.

The story that steelworkers walk on their heads in their free time is entertaining.

But absolutely everyone, he said, is interested in the weather and sports.

So, without the weather and sports, the program should not go on the air.

Five minutes of sports and two and a half minutes of weather - that was Letunov's setup.

Letunov recorded the release time - 21 hours.

And this was very important, because before time was floating.

How did recognizable music appear in

the
Vremya
program ?

- The image of each program begins with the first chords of music.

It should be recognizable, loved and attract attention.

Now we are talking about Sviridov and his famous “Time, Forward!” Chosen by our brilliant journalist Andrey Zolotov.

An excerpt from the plot of Channel One, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Vremya program: “In the 1970s, Andrei Zolotov, the first journalist on Soviet TV screens with a thick full beard, put on the air a melody, without which today the Vremya program is already impossible to imagine.

“In the first releases of the Vremya program there was a kind of electronic screensaver.

I decided that something else was needed and edited a fragment from Sviridov's music “Time, Forward!”, which, in my understanding, personified both movement, and tension, and some kind of movement of the luminaries, do you understand?

And so it became the screensaver of the Vremya program, ”says Andrey Zolotov, a correspondent for the Vremya program in 1968-1971.”

The weather is not politics - everyone listens to it.

And the approach to the music that ends the program had to be special.

This was subtly felt by musical designer Elena Shepeleva.

She went through the vast library of radio and television and found the French song "Manchester and Liverpool".

For this find, for getting into the topic and mood, Letunov then wrote her a significant award.

Under Letunov, it was generally impossible to calmly walk along the corridor.

Everything had to burn, fly out from under the feet and immediately be realized on the air.

For bright creative ideas, he generously wrote out a lot of money.

Modesty was not recognized or encouraged by him.

As an example, Gennady Svishchenkov, whom I talked about, is a modest person and an incredible hard worker.

Letunov often made remarks to him for the fact that he “has been silent for years at the meetings”, does not throw ideas and does not interrupt anyone.

- And what was Yuri Letunov like in character?

He wanted to know everything and everything.

Example: The Ostankino tower was launched in 1967, and Letunov came in 1970 and at one of the very first editorial meetings asked the question: “Who was on the tower?”

Silence.

“Why was a new tower needed in the presence of Shukhovskaya?

What did she give everyone?

After a while, the entire editorial team went to the tower.

Yuri Alexandrovich burned like fire.

He literally lived at work and quickly burned out ... And although his leadership was only seven years old, he remained in the history of the Vremya program as an era.

He developed the technology and structure of the editorial board.

Other editors said: “What are you doing there in your information?

Spit once."

But it is not.

This became clearly visible when the leapfrog of chief editors began in the 1990s.

I remember that dandies in suede shoes with fashionable hair would come and begin to say some smart words that we didn’t even understand.

And on the third day - the eyes are running, the tie is to one side, there is no parting.

Everyone asks about something, but he cannot answer a single question.

And very soon he realizes that he is in trouble.

Many will work for a month, go crazy and run away.

During my work, and this is more than 30 years, I have experienced 16 chief editors.

Shukhov tower, 1959 / Ostankino tower, 1974
RIA News
© Arkady Shaikhet / Valery Shustov

"Ostankino landing"

- The television center was built in 1967, and the first program "Vremya" in 1968 was filmed on Shabolovka.

Why not in Ostankino?

- It was still impossible to work in Ostankino, there was continuous construction.

But we have already begun to develop this space.

Thanks to the launch of the Ostankino TV Tower, the Fourth Program appeared.

It was Mesyatsev's experiment.

To implement it, each editorial office landed an "Ostankino landing".

We did the block "Entertaining Information", the first episode of which went on the air on November 4, 1967 at 19:45.

It was he who opened the work of the Ostankino Tower for Soviet viewers.

It was a kind of alternative to the official information program.

We have expanded our news coverage.

We were looking for highlights that should have been present in each plot of the 15-minute program.

By that time, under the Ostankino tower there was a box in which two studios, the seventh and the eighth, were mounted.

Opposite are two barracks.

Workers who continued construction lived in one, editorial offices worked in the other.

From the barracks they fled to the air over rough terrain: construction, snow, ice and other delights.

There was also no dining room.

A woman came here with cottage cheese and processed cheese, titanium was heated for days with hot water.

We did not yet have our own sources of information, there was no subscription to agencies, there was no corset.

The microphone folder of each issue was signed by the management at Shabolovka.

There was still no transport from Ostankino - on foot, through the mud in rubber boots.

This was our life.

Irina Tereshkina, editor of the Vremya program, with Yury Chernyak, correspondent in Yaroslavl, and Yury Opelyants, cameraman in Kostroma / at the workplace
© From the personal archive

— What was the microphone folder?

- A microphone is a complete reflection of the text of the broadcast on paper.

I remember a colleague who lived with Letunov in the same house told me that in the evenings, when he himself went out for a walk with the dog, he met Letunov, who returned home late with a pile of microphones in his hands.

Like a teacher taking essays home to check, he read all the microphone folders for the day.

- Did you read after the broadcast?

But what about censorship, which they love to talk about so much?

- The censor was in the editorial office, but it was a different kind of censorship.

The censor had a huge volume containing a list of restrictions on the ether: this was primarily due to considerations of secrecy and security.

For example, it was impossible to make panoramas on bridges.

It was possible to show only the beginning of the bridge and the end.

What tasks the censor had, only they knew.

But even the yield of wheat could not be named.

It was a strategic figure.

It was impossible to give the names of some factories.

But local correspondents also knew well where they could poke their noses and where not.

And Letunov watched the layout, the style, the words, and the construction of the plot before the broadcast.

Everything interested him.

It was important for him that we write in such a way that the viewer can easily and accurately perceive the information.

He worked very hard.

When he was given the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, everyone joked that this was a mistake and that he should have been given the Red Banner of Labor.

We feared him and loved him very much.

moment of silence

How did the moment of silence come about?

Was it also invented in the editorial office of the information?

- A minute of silence was invented here in 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

It was made by Nikolai Mesyatsev and Irana Kazakova.

They wrote this text for two months.

When they wrote and verified each word, they began to think on what to show it on.

There was no Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near the Kremlin wall yet.

At first they wanted to read this text on the portrait of a soldier.

And why the soldier, they ask us.

Where is the tanker?

Where is the pilot?

Where is the sailor?

There were many disputes.

There are also many offers.

We agreed to light a fire in the studio against a brick wall.

A wall was erected in the studio and a fire in a shell was lit on the floor.

The minute of silence was supposed to be broadcast live.

But there was a danger that the fire would suddenly go out.

And then the director Natalya Levitskaya, on her own initiative, during the rehearsal, filmed the fire and loaded it in the film projection control room just in case.

And indeed, live, the fire began to fade.

Then Natalya immediately turned on the film and switched to it.

An employee of the telecine projection control room No. 8 of the Ostankino television center during work, 1970
RIA News
© Chirkin

From the text that was written for a moment of silence, goosebumps were on the skin.

Two people read: Yuri Levitan and little-known radio announcer Vera Enyutina.

And when they read it on the air, the country just blew up, we were bombarded with letters and calls...

And then this is what happened: Vera married an American and left the country.

And the leadership of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company ordered to record a new text for a minute of silence.

They charged Galina Shergova and Yevgeny Sinitsyn, and Igor Kirillov recorded it.

It was good, for sure.

But it seems to me that the first "minute" was stronger.

First Air and First Brigade

Irina Turkina is a veteran of the Vremya program.

She was part of the same on-air team that aired the first Vremya program on January 1, 1968, and still works as an on-air director on Novosti releases.

Irina shared with RT her memories of how the design of the program was made, how many people worked on it, and what technical means the editors had.

- Do you remember how the very first broadcast took place on January 1, 1968?

Who worked then in the broadcast team?

- I remember that there were a lot of people, the editorial staff was assembled, the leadership was in place.

The director Galina Balashova was at the remote control.

The director's assistants were me and Svetlana Rodinova.

The entire preparation of the broadcast was supervised by the editor-in-chief Yuri Vladeev.

There were no editors at the time.

Corresponding authors wrote the texts themselves.

They came, brought printed sheets with their stories.

They worked with pencils on their knees.

Sami sat with the editors.

There was good coordination between departments.

There was one channel, one Central Television, everyone worked together.

Everyone knew each other.

The film crew of the Central Television on Red Square during preparations for the broadcast on May 1 (from right to left): editor Izolda Egorova, assistant director Irina Turkina, directors Sergei Zakharov and Georgy Shabardin (in a hat), April 29, 1969

— The program “Vremya” stood out with heroic music and a beautiful screensaver.

And how did it all start?

- The main director was Alexey Petrachenko.

He then came from London and offered to make the program "Time".

His deputy was Sergei Zakharov.

When we started the first releases of the program, there was no “header” yet.

On the screen saver, there was just a clock - a regular alarm clock.

And only then the four of us - me, Sergey Zakharov, Tatyana Petrovskaya and Sofia Gordienko - made the “hat” manually in the control room: we twisted the globe like a globe on a black velvet background, and then superimposed letters with the help of effects.

The engineers were great.

All were able to.

The weather was in the photographs to the music of Tchaikovsky's The Four Seasons.

The musical designer was Elena Shepeleva.

Remote control in the studio of the Moscow television center on Shabolovka, 1959 / Viktor Balashov, 1971
RIA News

- Who was the first leader?

- The first host was Viktor Balashov.

He read the text behind the scenes, and in the frame there were film materials.

Everything looked like regular news, only more extended.

The ether was alive.

"Vremya" came out from Monday to Thursday at 19:30, and on Friday there was a "News Relay", which was led by several people: Yuri Fokin, Irana Kazakova, Alla Melik-Pashaeva, Alexander Khazanov, Leonid Elin.

Correspondents' materials came from all over the country on film.

They were brought from the airfield, they were already developed and mounted here.

The time of 19:30 was chosen optimally, so that as many regions as possible could connect to the air, taking into account the time difference.

- What was the peculiarity of the News Relay Race, the difference from the Vremya program?

— «Эстафета новостей» — это была большая программа обо всём, что произошло за неделю. Много сюжетов, начиная с Дальнего Востока. Из разных регионов, которые располагали ПТС (передвижными телевизионными станциями. — RT), шли прямые включения. Бывали тематические выпуски (например, космические «Эстафеты»), иногда шли в эфире по четыре-пять часов.

Памятные фото «Эстафеты новостей», посвящённой космосу, собранные редакционной службой, 1969 год

Никаких запретов и ограничений не было. Все гости были «живые», приходили в студию представители науки, академики, певцы — кого только не было.

— Телецентр сдали в 1967-м, а программа в 1968-м выходила ещё на Шаболовке. Почему?

- In 1967, it was even impossible to drive up there properly.

Solid mud, walking in rubber boots.

By the way, when we moved from Shabolovka to Ostankino, we moved from French to Soviet equipment.

Only later did the Soviet government again buy us French equipment.

And on Shabolovka, by the way, there was also a color experimental studio.