Television in the Soviet Union

[citation needed] World War II disrupted regular television broadcasting; it was re-instated in Moscow on 15 December 1945.

In time for the golden jubilee year of the October Revolution, 1967, SECAM color broadcasts debuted in both Moscow and Leningrad on their local TV channels.

By 1973, the Soviet television service had grown into six full national channels, plus republican and regional stations serving all republics and minority communities.

[citation needed] A major boost to television in the Soviet Union occurred with the implementation of the Ekran system.

The first Ekran satellite was launched on October 26, 1976, into geostationary orbit at 99° E. The system covered 40% of the country's territory (5 million square kilometers) and was intended for small settlements in Siberia, the Far East, and the Far North of the Soviet Union.

At the suggestion of V. A. Shamshin, frequency modulation was used in the satellite-to-earth channel, which required ground-based signal conversion.

This solved the problems with frequency compatibility and made it possible to cover the entire territory of the Soviet Union with broadcasting (Ekran served only Siberia, the Far North and part of the Russian Far East).

The basic model of the Moscow-B earth station, also developed at the Radio Research Institute, had a receiving parabolic antenna with a diameter of 2.5 m and, when working together with the RCTA-70/R-12 TV repeater, provided a zone of confident reception with a radius of about 20 km.

[5] Development began in 1974 on the initiative of Nikolai Talyzin and Lev Kantor; in 1979, the first satellite was launched at a geostationary position of 14° W. d., and the system was put into operation.

Systems of the "Moscow" type were widely used in the USSR and in some foreign missions of the country, a total of about 10 thousand earth stations of various modifications were released.

In 1986–1988, under the leadership of Yuri Zubarev, Lev Kantor, the "Moscow-Global" system was developed specifically for broadcasting to domestic missions abroad.

It used the same Gorizont satellite trunk as the Moskva system, but connected to an antenna that covered the maximum possible area of the Earth's surface.

Alongside them were a number of city television stations that served as retransmitters of national programming with local opt-outs for news and current affairs.

[citation needed] The system provided the opportunity to watch Central Television programs for almost 90 million citizens of the USSR living in Siberia and the Far East.

The national television channels were only on the air for part of the day, giving room in the schedule to time-shift.

Prohibited topics included criticism against the status and implementation of Soviet ideology, all aspects of erotica and nudity, graphic portrayal of violence, coarse language, and illicit drug use.

[citation needed] The leading news programmes used presenters with exemplary diction and excellent knowledge of the Russian language.

Sergey Georgyevich Lapin, chairman of the USSR State Committee for Television and Radio (1970 to 1985), made a number of rules.

Lapin banned a broadcast of a close-up of Alla Pugacheva singing into the microphone, as he considered it reminiscent of oral sex.

The increase in the number of channels and the duration of daily broadcasts created a shortage of suitable content.

During the 1970s, the straightforward fervor gave way to a more nuanced interplay of patriotism, family and everyday life wrapped into traditional genres of crime drama, spy show or thriller.

This 12-episode miniseries incorporated features of political thriller and docudrama and included excerpts from period newsreels.