Excerpts from the history of the Russian sociology of media: the Channel Five research service (1991—2000)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the origin and development of sociological services of the biggest Russian TV companies in the 1990s and early 2000s. The audience measurement, recently referred to as public opinion studies, has always been an important source of information to assess both the performance of the editorial staff and the mood of the audience. Sociological services run by major TV channels in the 1990s carried a lot of weight in the company’s structure. The Author’s study aims at filling the gaps in the history of the development of sociological services. The data have biographical value; most of information obtained during the interviews with the head of the Petersburg Russian State Company for Television and Radio Broadcasting has not been published before. They shed light on various facts of the history of the weighting methods in Russia. In particular, they help to describe in detail the work of the Channel Five sociological service. The author also describes the milestones in the history of media measurement in Russia.