It is also increasingly rare, fortunately, to hear a manager describe his target audience as 'obshchaya' - general, though it still happens in smaller cities with little competition. Programming is usually more or less tightly formatted, again depending on the level of the competition. The challenge confronting managers is not just that the advertising pool in the major cities is shallow and barely able to sustain the number of competing stations. Business owners and entrepreneurs are often short of marketing skills and have little awareness of how and where to advertise. Managers are thus finding themselves in the position not only of having to develop their own sales and marketing departments, but also to try and educate the advertising market itself.
Training is a major preoccupation.
Experienced sales staff are hard to find, as are programming and newsroom staff. While many managers have benefited from exchange and technical assistance programmes which have taken them to Europe or the US, there is a growing recognition that, while participation in such programmes can benefit an individual staff member, they do little for the overall performance of the station as a whole.