7TV Thinks It Has a Sporting Chance

Backed by a low-profile businessman from the Urals city of Chelyabinsk and run by a retired police general, two-year-old 7TV is rather unusual in that it is perhaps the first attempt anywhere to build a general-access special-interest television channel. And it is slowly grabbing the attention of sports fans.

The all-sports channel first won widespread attention in January last year when President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to create a national sports channel as a way to promote a healthy way of life. 7TV had been widely expected to provide the foundation for the new channel.

Last fall, Press Minister Mikhail Lesin announced that the state-owned VGTRK media holding was in negotiations to buy a controlling stake in 7TV. At about the same time, the channel started plowing more money into its programming, hiring professionals from other stations, redesigning its format and adding new shows.

But Oleg Aksyonov, who retired more than two years ago as a police major general and head of the Interior Ministry's public relations department to become 7TV's general director, denied in an interview Friday that the changes were part of an attempt to raise the channel's bargaining position.

"We are just developing the channel as we have been doing since we launched it practically from scratch," Aksyonov said.

7TV dates back to December 2001, when a group of companies bought the Children's Project television station and relaunched it as a sports channel. Today, the channel's shareholders are Spartak president Andrei Chervichenko, Krasbank and the Dyuff holding owned by Chelyabinsk businessman Alexander Besputin, who is the channel's president. 7TV officials declined to say what Besputin's core business is.

The bulk of 7TV's programming consists of sports events from Russia and abroad. Broadcasts have included NHL hockey games and NBA basketball, the Paris-Dakar rally, boxing matches, the Tour de France and soccer matches from Britain, Spain, Germany and, most importantly, Russia. Much to the delight of the country's many soccer fans, 7TV shows two Russian Premier League games every week.

7TV also has started acting as the host broadcaster for international championships taking place in Russia, such as the European boxing championship last year in Perm, and has returned to television screens sports events like field hockey.

But the channel is particularly proud of its original programming, without which it would be next to impossible to build a channel for general audiences.

7TV 7TV general director Oleg Aksyonov

"We want to expand as much as possible the audience of people who are interested in sports on TV," Aksyonov said. "For that, we do not need to talk about sports in the language of sports professionals but in a normal journalistic language. We need to show not only goals, points and seconds but talk about the drama and explain the details."

Nikolai Nikolayev, who built his career at NTV and then moved to run the "Independent Investigation" show on Channel One, now works as 7TV's general producer. Ashot Nasibov, who continues to work part-time at TVS, runs 7TV's news desk. The channel, which started broadcasting around the clock in September, has 12 sports newscasts a day.

Olympic figure skating champion Irina Rodnina hosts a weekly talk show called "After the Pedestal," which profiles well-known athletes and discusses what happened to them after they left sports.

Another figure skating champion, Maria Butyrskaya, hosts together with actor Mikhail Politseimako a daily workout show called "Morning Exercises for the Country." The program comes complete with recipes for healthy cuisine, jokes and advice on how to fight fat.

"The television channel is like a bus," Aksyonov said. "It has started its route and is picking up new passengers at every stop. The more interesting passengers we have, the more interesting the channel becomes."

Despite its efforts -- and its signal being picked up in 370 cities and towns across the country -- 7TV has not seen its viewership numbers take off. The channel's average share of television viewers around the country is about 1 percent. In Moscow, where reception is poor due to a weak signal, viewership is about 0.5 percent.

That is where an alliance with VGTRK would come in handy. Aksyonov said the political weight of the holding would allow 7TV win more regional licenses and get the rights to big games, which come with expensive price tags.

	7TV 7TV president Alexander Besputin

The negotiations, however, stalled last month. Lesin told reporters that the reasons included a refusal by Besputin to audit the channel and sell a controlling stake.

Aksyonov refused to say how much money had been invested in the channel or what the asking price had been for a controlling stake.

Kommersant reported earlier this month that VGTRK had been ready to buy 51 percent of the company for $15 million. The newspaper also said Besputin suddenly balked at selling the controlling stake during the final stages of negotiations.

Besputin called a news conference on April 1 to say he was ready to start an audit and resume negotiations.

But a senior VGTRK official, who did not want to be identified, said Friday that no talks are being held currently with 7TV.

Kommersant quoted VGTRK head Oleg Dobrodeyev as saying that VGTRK was preparing to start up its own sports channel by the fall of this year.