from moscow times
Orthodox Believers Get Own Channel
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer
Shows are hosted by priests, historians and a nationalist State Duma deputy. Commercials for beer and Western goods are strictly banned.
This is Spas, or Savior, television, the country's first Orthodox channel, and it goes on the air Thursday with the blessing of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II.
Spas' founders said the target audience were Orthodox believers and Russians who were baptized Orthodox but did not attend church. The channel will be transmitted 12 hours per day on NTV-Plus cable television.
Spas chief editor Ivan Demidov said financing for the channel had come from private investors, whom he did not name, and that commercials should cover its operating costs. "This should be a modern business project," Demidov recently told Religare.ru, a religious news web site.
He said only Russian companies would be allowed to place commercials.
On Tuesday, Demidov said at a news conference that beer commercials would also be banned, Interfax reported.
Demidov stressed that while the patriarch had blessed the channel, the church would not be involved in its operations.
The church concurred. "The channel has no administrative ties with the Moscow Patriarchate," Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a church spokesman said by telephone.
However, priests will participate in the shows. "Not using television to propagate the word of God would be criminal," Father Dmitry Smirnov, a Spas host and the head of the Moscow Patriarchate department that works with the police and military, said at the news conference. "This remarkable instrument, which is available in every house, is so far only being used for entertainment."
Demidov said the channel would air analytical shows, call-in talk shows and historical shows hosted by priests and historians. Among the hosts will be Natalya Narochnitskaya, a historian and member of the State Duma's nationalist Rodina faction.
Demidov said Spas would initially broadcast from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and programming would consist of three hours of new shows that would then be repeated. Broadcasting is to expand to 16 hours by the end of the year, and the channel hopes to join the lineup of other cable operators.
Spas will reach a potential audience of 1.2 million people on NTV-Plus, Interfax reported. NTV-Plus has 400,000 subscribers.
At least 75 percent of Russians are baptized Orthodox, but less than 20 percent pray and go to church, Chaplin said.
Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry launched a television channel called Zvezda, or Star, aimed at increasing patriotism and the prestige of the military.