RUSSIAN TELEVISION was once strictly controlled by the state. Experimental
transmission began in 1931 and the first centers in Moscow and Leningrad
were functioning in 1938, but television use really began to grow after World
War II. Russia had 10,000 sets in 1950 and nearly 3 million in 1958. In the
late 1950s, television was on about four hours a day, and more than half of
all shows were live. Russian films were released to TV as early as ten days
after they were shown in the theater and made up 40 percent of the telecasts.
Russians also got music, sports, theater, news, and children's programs, all
without commercial interruption because everything was state-sponsored.

In the next decades, television use continued to spread. Eventually most
Russians, even in the countryside, had access to television in the years under
communism. Televisions were not very expensive, and they were fairly plen-
tiful. In the mid 1980s, sports programs were a great favorite with the viewers,
especially soccer and ice hockey, as were foreign films. There were also cul-
tural shows featuring opera, ballet, folk dancing, and folksinging. News shows
were carefully constructed to present the correct ideological slant. As the
political situation in Russia began to change in the mid-1980s, new, more
entertaining shows like police dramas began to appear, but in general in the
communist era, there were few options for viewers who were looking for an
evening of light diversion.

Now, however, the situation is quite different. After communism fell, a
large number of Western shows, especially American shows, flooded the air-

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