All About TV6

Now that CNN will be banned from Russia (unknown if it will be banned definetly), I'd like to talk a bit about a Russian channel that was founded by the man behind Turner.

TV6's history is much older than you think - in the age of communism it was used as the technical channel of Soviet Central Television. Notable broadcasts included the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and during the age of Perestroika later on in the 80s, tennis matches.
Once the Soviet Union was finished in 1991, the six channels had different lives: the first channel now belonged to Ostankino, the second channel to the VGTRK, the third channel to 2X2/MTK and now TV Centr (with 2X2 reviving in 2007), the fourth channel to Ostankino and then to NTV, the fifth channel still under the control of St. Petersburg and the sixth channel was given to TV6 and Northern Crown.

The channel was created by Eduard Sagalajev and Ted Turner, with some help from the VID production company, creators of the Russian version of Wheel of Fortune and Wait For Me, who came to produce some shows for the channel. The company that controlled TV6 was created by three men: Eduard Sagalajev, Oleg Orlov (who was in charge of the local media at the time) and Nugzar Paphadze (former secretary of the Georgian Communist Party). They contributed to 51% of the channel's intellectual property and the remaining 51% in cash was sent to Ted Turner.

VID also participated as well, and, like I said before, produced some of the channel's shows. In August 1991, the Moscow Independent Broadcasting Company was established, whose shareholders included the government of Moscow, LogoVAZ, Mosbuisnessbank, Lukoil and Mosfilm.

The channel officially launched on January 1st, 1993. The channel's schedule included cartoons, movies and CNN programming with simultaneous translation. On February 22nd, Northern Crown launched as an educational documentary channel. Due to lack of funding, Northern Crown ceased broadcasting in the fall of 1994 and TV6 had stopped timesharing. In April 1994, TV6 expanded outside of Moscow and started broadcasting nationwide (with some exceptions). New shows included "Kinescope" and "POSTmusical News".


The channel's first major rebrand occured on January 1st, 1995. In March 1996, TV6 established their very own news team.

The channel closed in 2002, being replaced by TVS, which also closed down due to low ratings.