The Great Game and the evolving nature of political talk shows on Russian television

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the specific way in which the Russian government under President Vladimir V. Putin uses television to propagate pro-government views on domestic and international politics by influencing what is aired. This paper examines the first season of The Great Game (Bol’shaya Igra in Russian), a television talk show that appears on Russia’s national television network Channel One, as an example of the government’s effort to shape public opinion. A content analysis suggests The Great Game differs from the typical Russian talk show genre in that it delivers political messages without much entertainment, providing cerebral discussions of issues that nonetheless back up all nine of the core “neoconservative” concepts underlying recent Russian political strategy. This suggests that the Russian government and television executives innovate to determine how best to use television to win over skeptical citizens to the Kremlin’s point of view.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• television
• propaganda
• persuasion
• political talk shows
• news

Notes

1. Ratings for the most-watched Russian programs both nationally and in Moscow in each can be found (in Russian) at https://mediascope.net/data/. News of the Week has generally been in the top 20 shows nationally and top 10 in Moscow during the first quarter of 2020.

2. This refers to the Valdai Discussion Club, which I address later in this article.

3. Time codes are from the English translations of the shows on YouTube, unless the show did not appear there. A few English-language episodes missing from YouTube were located on the Channel One website.

4. Gordon’s invitation was particularly surprising given that his website published accusations that Simes was Russian agent Maria Butina’s handler in the US. See https://english.gordonua.com/news/exclusiveenglish/who-is-dimitri-simes-and-why-is-he-trying-to-sink-mayflower-investigation-by-yuri-felshtinsky-316154.html.

5. The Great Game does sometimes make it into the top 100 most-watched programs in Russia, as it did during the week of 6–12 April 2020. The show of 11 April was ranked 84th with a 2.2 rating and share of 8. See https://mediascope.net/data/for data.