Nor did there exist the excellent Leningrad School of Television, the archives of which one today can read and watch with amazement and excitement. Nor was there the famous Channel 4 in Moscow, to which the entire intelligentsia was devoted, until they got rid of the all-powerful Lapin. As a matter of fact, the calamity and collapse began just when TV was beginning to feel self-satisfied, whereupon it transformed itself from a mediator between culture and society to a producer of utter trash. Television could not even produce its own programming, and we now live in a world of artless surrogates. The utter ugliness of this environment, obviously, is not conducive to national improvement.
Commercial television dances to the tune of the latest infectious fashion.
Enlightened television uses the entire cultural and historical space. From its point of view, there still exist literature, art, theater, opera, ballet and folk dancing, the symphony. It is interested in history and philosophy, and it sees drama as something entirely different from soap operas. Except that it is also interested in life. Both that of the entire nation, and of the individual.