Daniel Satinsky Oh, OK.
Manana Aslamazyan Another step to develop this media business. But it’s not only that. In these years we also recognized: when I am the owner of a TV channel and I’m going to do advertising for my local drugstore or my local bakery, I can ask them for a hundred rubles and put this address of this bakery on my TV screen. But it's not enough to make real money. I would like to get to big budgets and big budgets exist only in Moscow. In my city, there are not too many big budget advertisers who are ready to pay a lot of money. Then they decide: if I am the owner of a TV station, even in Yekaterinburg, which is the third biggest city in Russia, the number of my viewers is not enough to be attractive for big business. It would be interesting to try to organize somehow a TV station union. At that time, we already used to organize the heads of advertising departments of Russian TV channels association. Let's say I am the head of advertising department in Yekaterinburg, another one is the head of the advertising department in Novgorod, in Oryol etc. All of them together came to our seminars and is some sort of way exchanged information how to work with advertisers. And they think: if we come together to the big advertisers, probably we can get a lot of money. For that reason, after one of the seminars about management, a few TV managers decided: let's think how we can organize some sort of TV network. What is a TV network? Network is something which exists in the U.S.: CBS, NBC, etc. And how does it work? There is the independent station in each American city, but they have special programs, which belong to the network. CBS produces The Oprah Winfrey Show. Someone creates the Oprah Winfrey show and sells it to CBS. And the broadcast the Oprah Winfrey Show. Each independent, more or less independent channel in U.S.: channel in Boston, channel in San Francisco, they broadcast this Oprah Winfrey Show. They do not produce that show. They just broadcast it because they are members of CBS network. Our guys decided: let’s organize our network. And they organized network, called Independent Broadcasting System.
Daniel Satinsky Great.
Manana Aslamazyan They signed an agreement among themselves. And the agreement says: we're going to buy rights for everyone to broadcast for four hours, and we promise to broadcast in these four hours. It can be a feature films, documentaries, some sort of programs. We’re going to broadcast the same TV shows, the same movies, the same documentaries, the same everything every day. And then we come to an advertiser in Moscow and say: we have 60 cities that every day show the best American documentary at 8 p.m. local time. We would like to offer you this audience. Will you buy our viewers? And we organized this independent network. Meg Gaydosik and Bob Campbell and other very famous people who ran media in U.S. and even came to Russia and lived there for about a year, half year, etc. They helped us to create this independent TV network, and this network also hired two young Americans: Paul Mitcher and another guy, [Mitchell] Rosenbaum. I don't remember. They became our sellers for this independent network. They went to Russian advertisers, they went to Coca-Cola, they went to the lot of-
Daniel Satinsky Mars and Proctor and Gamble…
Manana Aslamazyan …McDonalds. You can show your advertising not only on the federal TV channels, but also on local channels. It's much better because there is a very good trust in local channels and this is very good. We can advertise not Coca-Cola in general, but we also can advertise those who sell Coca-Cola in this city. Put the local number there. It was very smart idea. And this Independent Broadcasting System, that's what it was called. Independent Broadcasting System, they organized about 60 big channels in it.
Daniel Satinsky This was in 50 cities? 60. And was the content mostly American? What was the content?
Manana Aslamazyan Content was American, French, Russian. There were a lot of different… But the movies are definitely the most attractive thing. And we bought a few TV series from the Brazil, soap operas. The soap opera was very popular. It was very cheap; it was easy to broadcast. There were about 200 episodes, and it lasted a long time. We bought it for $100 per hour, and it was for all this independent system. It was really cheap, and it was really great.
Manana Aslamazyan Last two things which I would like to tell you about these years. At the end of 90’, there few other things started to grow in Soviet Russia at that time.
Manana Aslamazyan Anyway, what was going on in the meantime. In the meantime, there was... What's the name of the head of CNN?
Daniel Satinsky Ted Turner.
Manana Aslamazyan Yes. Ted Turner. He's also become interested in Russia and wanted to come to Russia to do business. And he organized one of the first… Probably at the same time, 93’, I don't remember exactly. With Eduard Sagalaev, who is the one of the very famous Russian producers and rich guy, they organized this TV-6 channel which was an American channel. They got a license, and TV-6 was one the first real businesses in Russia. TV-6 also tried to get the license for different cities and organize these things and something like that. Which mean this IBS, Independent Broadcasting System grew up in competition with TV-6, with a channel that belonged to Ted Turner. You can read a little bit about it. Ted Turner had a lot of interviews about that, and you don't need me to tell the story. That's the first thing. The second is that there was not only Ted Turner, we used to have lot of good American teaching. And a lot of rich guys in the Soviet Union decided “I also would like to open a TV station in Moscow.” They started to open independent TV stations, privately owned independent TV stations in Moscow. They put in a lot of money and got broadcast licenses for Moscow. But very soon they recognized that they can make good money from the Moscow-based advertisers, because they have the broadcast for Moscow. But they don't have the whole Soviet Union. They would like to cover all Russia, let's say the Russia first. And they started to think how to do that. They recognized that there are a lot of local TV stations in these cities. At that time, about 1998, we used to have a catalog of these TV stations, and we had very good Internet resource. And we used to have about 2,500 TV stations in our catalog.
It was even more, because if we count also newspapers, all independent media probably there were about 15,000. But for only TV stations, which used to be in our catalog, there were 2,500. I can show you. We even published a book about that. And these people from Moscow thought that it's very interesting. “Probably I can get an agreement with some local station.” And they tried to hunt these local stations. In the meantime, there was one of these Russian-based broadcasters called REN-TV. And it was organized by a very independent woman, very brave, very, very, very smart. She sold her apartments to organize the TV channel. Really, sold her apartment. She had a very good experience in producing programs in the former Soviet Union. She produced one of the best TV programs called Kinopanorama, it was a show about cinema. She knew a lot of people, everybody knew her. She was very famous. She was very brave and very independent. And she sold her excellent apartment. And her husband used to be a former dissident, Maksimov, who left Russia many, many years ago.
Daniel Satinsky What was her name?
Manana Aslamazyan Irena Lesnevskaya. She organized this REN-TV because her name is “Irena.” She broadcasted only in Moscow. And because I knew her personally and I loved her and I trusted her, I came up with an idea. I talked to this IBS guy. I told them, guys, you have licenses in 60 cities. She has license in Moscow. It would be very good if we can make a deal and create a real network of the channels with the broadcasting licenses in Moscow and in many, many cities. I talked to the Board of this IBS and called Irena and said: Irena Stefanovna, I would like to bring you five guys who have a license in the biggest Russian cities: Nizhniy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, St Petersburg and Tomsk. And we would like to talk with you. And she said, please come!
We came to her and immediately they decided to make a deal and to create Ren-TV – NVS (IBS) and they started to work. There were a lot of details, I don't want to go too deep into. If you would like me to tell about this story, we can maybe talk another time. We created this REN-TV - NVS story. And not only REN-TV, at that time we organized something called TNT in Moscow, one channel from Moscow CTC, which is privately owned right now. They even went IPO in US, CTC channel. You know it?
Daniel Satinsky Yeah. There was a guy…
Manana Aslamazyan Alexander Rodnyansky.
Daniel Satinsky Okay.
Manana Aslamazyan They really went IPO. Mikhail Khodorkovsky started to buy some the TV channels...
Daniel Satinsky These years Gusinsky also had his...
Manana Aslamazyan Oh, Gusinsky! I forgot, the biggest one was NTV, the biggest one was Gusinsky and NTV. And I would like to tell you, when Gusinsky started to make NTV first things what they did. It was probably in 93”. [He hired] One day the NTV editor in chief Oleg Dobrodeev, who is now running the government TV called Russia-RTR, this is big transformation happened to this guy. The second guy was Yevgeny Kiselyov, a journalist who right now lives in Kyiv. It’s not Dmitry Kiselyov. There are two Kiselyovs: Yevgeny (“Eugene”) Kiselyov and Dmitry. Yevgeny Kiselyov is persona non grata in Russia and he lives in Ukraine. and he is doing his Sunday show. [He hired] Yevgeny Kiselyov and Igor Malashenko, who was a chief executive director of this Gusinsky’s channel. Gusinsky was the owner. He hired these three best guys at that time to make his TV channel. They called me and came to our office, to Internews. I was shocked. They were stars! Why they came to me? We were doing renovation in the office, we just moved to this office. There was a small room full of people and these three big guys came, all about two meters tall, and famous and everyone know them. And they came to my office and said: ‘We know you are Americans, working with Americans. We are looking for the journalists around the city. Can you help us to find good journalists in different cities, to create our network of journalists?” They didn't want to create network or broadcasters; they would like to create a network of journalists. I gave them a lot of addresses, and we worked with NTV very closely. Until Gusinsky sold NTV and NTV became a horrible channel, we were very friendly, really close with NTV, a lot of NTV journalists taught at our seminars, all the stars. There was NTV “before” and “after”. NTV “before” was an excellent channel, independent TV channel, but a little bit maybe too politicized and became… I think right now about CNN. In the beginning CNN was totally balanced media. Every word was truth, we knew it’s the truth. When Trump, Trumpism came, all this type of things came, sometimes we see, the CNN is against [Trump], they don’t keep the balance. Because they became an opinionated journalism.
And this also happened in the Soviet Union [Russia]. Sometimes NTV became too opinionated because they would like to support Yeltsin's people against some communists, something like that. They lost the independence. They lost the balance and found themselves in a dangerous situation. About many media organizations today which started in early 90s, when we talk about it among us, we always add a few words: “Gazeta.ru before or Gazeta.ru after.” Its name is still Gazeta.ru, but two different media. NTV before – it was excellent, and the NTV after… I don't have button for this channel on my remote. I mean NTV doesn't exist for me at all. REN-TV, which I helped to create and grow and make excellent doesn't exist for me anymore. It became horrible, horrible, horrible. All these things at the end of 90s and beginning of 2000s I would say, somehow there was a boundary line. For different media in different years, but it's probably end of 90s and beginning of 2000s, sometime 2003-2005. It depends on how long the owner could keep his independence.
It happened to the big media, it happened to the small media, private media, local media, the regional media, all these things happened during these 2000s. These TV channels owned by Gusinsky, Berezovsky, Lesnevskaya started to buy local media, started to pay them money. [They were actually buying] license: one license two licenses. And by the end of 2002, maybe 2003, we used to have for example four big networks: TV-6, NTV, REN-TV, TNT, CTC – five big networks, who either had agreements with the local broadcasters or owned local media as a business unit. Even at that time they were more or less independent. We used to organize the Russian American Media Entrepreneurship Dialogue in 2002. It was initiated by USAID. I would like to send you materials about this Dialogue, Unfortunately I only have printed materials because when Internews closed in Russia, they took everything. I don’t have an archive on my computer, but I can scan this material and show you this Russian American Media Entrepreneurship Dialog which happened din the US, including US media and businessmen. It started probably at the same time as the Russian American business dialogue. It was 2002, 2003. I don't know if you have some connection with that.
Daniel Satinsky I remember that period, so yeah.
Manana Aslamazyan There was supposed to be a meeting with the two presidents.
Daniel Satinsky Gore–Chernomyrdin Commission.
Manana Aslamazyan And before that they organized these dialogs. Internews was one of the organizers for the media entrepreneurship dialog. At that time, we used to have really independent media. Even the Minister of Mass Media, Mikhail Lesin, who was killed in Washington many years ago, probably, you know this story. At that time, when we were organizing the conference, he said: “Government must leave the media. Media have to be private. Media must be independent,” They promised a lot of interesting things. But starting from 2004, 2005, the government and the oligarchs who were controlled by and were very close to government, started to buy everything. Right now, we don't have independent TV on the federal, regional level at all. We have independent media, I would say online media, a lot of online media, very small, very poor, but online media. One independent TV channel which broadcasts is the TV station “Rain,” which is right now in a difficult situation. And we still have probably a few locally owned TV channels which definitely are very weak and for them it’s very difficult to survive. Most of the owners, who became too rich, sold their businesses to rich people and bought villas on the Cote d'Azur or somewhere else. Most of them have left the country, live in U.S, in Europe, because they sold so well the TV stations. They live without working, as rentier for the end of their life, even aren’t starting to do new business. Because it's very difficult when you have the hundreds of millions on your account and you moved from your country to another, it's very difficult to start a new business. As one of them told me, “I didn't go to school with these people. I didn't go to university. They are not my friends. I don't understand them. It's better to put the money in an investment fund and live off the interest. I'm not taking the risk to do the new business in foreign country.” Most of them are doing that.
That's the story about the end of independent television in Russia. My personal story was totally different. And I don't know if you're interested in that, but independent… Oh, two things I would like to say, why do they always say, “Ask Manana, ask Manana!”
Until ‘94, we had this Internews representative office in Moscow. I used to have an American director, Vince Malgren. I used to have training coordinator Paul Greenberg. I used to have the program manager Meg Gaydosik. I used to have a lot of Americans who worked there. I also worked as an administrator, as an executive, some sort of executive. But what is very good about Russians, I don't know how you feel about that, but we learn very fast.
Daniel Satinsky Yes.
Manana Aslamazyan All of us would like to take care about our business. In ’94 Vince decided to leave the country after the three years in Moscow. He said, “I would like to go back. To be honest, I feel very sorry. My salary is ten times more than yours, but you work ten times more than me, and I feel sorry about that. I would like to recommend that you as a director.” My salary was about 1,000 or 500, I don't remember.
I said, “Oh, Vince, I can’t, I'm not working for Internews. I have just a temporary contract as a CEO. But you know what I would like? I would like to organize our Russian Internews as a Russian organization, not as a representative office.” And we started to discuss these things. Vince moved back, and we discussed it with David and with everyone. And in ’97 15 Russian citizens plus the Persephone Miel, who used to work for Internews Network, but lived in Russia, we set up the new organization called Internews Russia. We closed out the representative office. We registered the Russian-owned organization and called it “Internews Russia.” It's exactly the name. I became president of this organization and started to work. When the Internews Network, the US-based organization, got the grants, they took it from USAID, took part of this money for their own employees and sent the grant to us. But we started to have opportunity to apply not only to USAID but not only to US-based donors. We started to do fundraising from European organizations, from Russian foundations. We got money from the MacArthur Foundation. We got money from Ford Foundation. We got money from the European Endowment for Democracy, from the European Union, TACIS Program. There're lot of European donors based there. In the beginning of 2000s, we used to be the richest, biggest Russian NGO, who were run by a Russian citizen. We had a good relationship with the European donors, with European partners, because we kept the name of Internews. I used to be a member of the Internews Network Board, and every year I went to the Board Meeting. I was always joking: “I am an Armenian woman, who lives in Russia. I am excellent candidate as a board member, because of my gender, nationality.
Daniel Satinsky Perfect.
Manana Aslamazyan For many years I used to be a Board member for Internews Network and Internews Europe. Anyway, we organized this Internews Russia, called Internews, autonomous non-profit organization. We had a very good board. We had Americans in our board, we had Russian people on our board, definitely. And donors from all around the world, and donors even from the Russian oligarchs. Mikhail Khodorkovsky gave us the first grant, $1 million. There was an excellent oligarch whose name is Dmitry Zimin, he gave us grant. Anyway, the Russian oligarchs also gave us money, sometimes even the TV stations we helped grow. They gave us small amounts of money, but they gave as a thank you for everything we taught them. We became the biggest Russian NGO with the budget about $5 or $7 millions per year, about 65 full time employees. There were 100-200 part time employees. We were in charge of everything, everything, everything what was going on in Russia about media. I remember that the government at that time tried to put the licensing process into order. They even invited me as one of the three independent members in this license committee, and I participated. Every month we give a lot of new licenses for new media. And there was a big competition. For every license, there were 10-15 people who wanted to get it. They paid a lot, so they tried to pay me bribes, all this type of thing. I became so famous, you can’t imagine. Every year during my birthday or on the 8th of March, which is Women’s Day, all our office, 200 square meters, was full of flowers. Everyone sent me flowers. Everyone sent me champagne for the New Year to celebrate this New Year. And all of our employees took home one bottle of excellent Dom Perignon.
I was smart. I always told them: “Guys, I'm not taking money, don’t bribe. Flowers – thank you. But if you’d like to help us, Internews, I will be happy if you come and teach. Give a lecture, free of charge. Give your knowledge to our young generation of journalists. Don't try to bribe me.” Anyway, I became very famous and we, Internews, became very famous. Which means we’ve become very interesting for the FSB
*, because of Americans and Europeans and the millions of dollars. They tried to follow us. They tried to follow us, follow us, follows us, and tried to find some reason to come and do something. And in 2007, I was in Paris, and I asked for money from my friend Eric Johnson. I went back to Moscow with €9,000 in my pocket. When I went through customs, they said, “Manana Albertovna, where did you come from?” I said, “Paris.” I went through the green lane. “We want to put your luggage to the screen.” I said, “Please, take it.” “How much money you have?” I told them that I have 9,000 euros, probably around 9,500 euros. And he immediately said, “You know that you’ve broken the law?” I said, ‘No, the law says 10,000 without declaration, if it less than 10,000, you don't have to declare.” And I had 9,000, 9,000 something, I had rubles euros etc. “No, you don't understand,” he told me, “This is about dollars, but you have euros.” At that time €9,000 was more than $10,000 because the cost [exchange rate] of the euro and dollars was different.
They took our money and tried to open a criminal investigation against me personally. But it was against me, and I thought, “Sorry, I am ready to pay all the penalty money. I openly showed you. I don’t hide because I don't understand the law.” I told them lots of things, but they didn’t listen to me. And in two days after that about 20 people from the FSB came to our office and took all our computers, documents, everything. It was called a seizure, and we called for a lawyer. The lawyer came and said, “Okay, guys, this is a private person, and this private person is guilty, but you have no rights according to Russian law to take all organization’s property, organizational documents, computers, these type of things. It's against the law. It's against everything.” But they didn’t pay attention. They took everything and left the office. They took even the small microwave. They took all the servers, computers, this type of things and our work was paralyzed. And I became the subject of news in all the media in the former Soviet Union. When I googled my name, I discovered about 300,000 mentions of my name.
Daniel Satinsky Wow.
Manana Aslamazyan It’s a horrible thing to become the subject of the news, you know. But I was lucky because people really respected me and respected the organization. People started to protect us. There were a few documentaries about me, and how good Internews was. Some 2,500 journalists, only journalists, not the people around the world, signed a petition to Putin, telling him “She’s not guilty.” All the famous journalists protected me, telling in the interviews a lot of stuff. But this investigation was still going on. We tried to go to court and say that this investigation was unfair. I am guilty. Penalize, punish me, don't punish the organization. No one paid attention and they told our lawyer, “We're going to arrest her. We're going to arrest her. We're going to arrest her.” And my employees and I decided that I have to leave the country. And in 2007, I moved to Paris. I was lucky enough. I used to have an open visa, and we have Internews in Paris. I moved to Paris to stay with Eric Johnson, my friend, who used to live there at that time. They have excellent apartments. I even had the key because I always stayed with him. They had two floors, huge apartment. His wife is a very expensive lawyer for rich people. And I used to have my room in these apartments. I moved to Paris to stay there until everything was finished. Nothing's happened.
Then our Board met, it happened in probably January, if I remember correctly. Sometimes our Board in Russia, we convened together, me by phone. And we discussed a lot what to do with Internews. We decided to close out Internews because it was very difficult at that time for TV stations and journalists to work with us. We put them in a difficult situation, if they wanted to communicate with us. They immediately became a subject of some sort of investigation in their city. We didn’t need to put these people in this difficult situation. We made our own decision and closed out our organization. Based on Russian law, we had to distribute everything what belonged to us to the different organizations. We gave everything to local organizations, paid the last money to our employees and they started to look for new jobs, because many of them were excellent journalists. Some of them were immediately hired, some of them not, but anyway. And I was still in Paris without work, without Internews, without money, without anything. And it was a very difficult time for me, even I got support. Two documentary film makers came to Paris to take interview and produce a documentary about me. As I say, it was very good exam, this strange situation. On the one hand, I recognized how many friends and what kind of love I have. And in the meantime, who is the real friend and who is not.
In 2007, when I was in Paris, we used to have Internews Europe in Paris, sister organization. And it was run by a guy from London. And he said, “You know, you live in Paris. There is no way probably for you go back to Russia. You're going to stay here. Come to work for Internews Europe, even replace myself. I would like to go and write my books, and it would be very good, because you know Internews very well. Your Internews Russia was bigger than Internews Europe. Let us hire you as a head of Internews Europe.” I said, “Guys, I don't speak French at all. I don't speak English well. I always need someone to translate.” My English for discussing right now without any... I don't know grammar. I never studied English in my life. In school and in university I studied German. I speak Armenian, Russian, Georgian, a little bit German, but my English was only from listening. Vince, Paul Greenberg, they talked next to me, and I listened, and watched some movies. And I learned by myself. This is why I have no pronunciation. I don't know the grammar. I don't know how to put all the verbs or write. Anyway, how I can run the European organization. They said, “We have people in the office, who speak very good Russian, they can help you. We're going to hire you,” and they hired me as a director of Internews Europe. And from 2008 until 2012, I ran Internews Europe without French. I got the work permission etc. But then I decided that I don't want this. It's very difficult for me. I would like to be an excellent director. If I always have to ask someone to help me to understand, help me express myself, it's not interesting. For that reason, I told my colleagues in Internews Europe that I would like to leave, and I left in 2012. But as an Internews Network employee, I moved to Armenia, worked there for two years as head of the project. But during this time, I always tried to apply to the different courts. And finally, I got the permission. I went to the many different level of the courts: regional, government, the state, the city court, the government court. Finally, I got to the level when I could apply to the Constitutional Court, which is the highest level in the Soviet Union [Russia], and I applied to this Constitutional Court. And for some reason they found me not guilty. But it happened after two years. You know, they recognized: okay, she lives there, why we should care about that. They find some reason to tell everyone “She is not guilty.” They gave me money back. My brother went for them [the money].
Daniel Satinsky 9,000 euros?
Manana Aslamazyan It was very funny. But at that time, I used to live in Paris, and I decided not to go back. I went back to Moscow in 2014 or 2015.
Manana Aslamazyan Now I'm based here in Moscow as an independent advisor for Internews and I work as an advisor for the Internews project in Central Asia. We have four countries there: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. As an advisor every day I start Zoom with the teams. I help them to find the trainers, to put the good schedule for the seminar, to organize the production competition. I’m working for Internews and every day I'm waiting when this Russian government who accepted new law about foreign…
Daniel Satinsky Foreign agent law.