Vremya - Schedule and Popularity

Schedule and Popularity

Vremya's main edition is scheduled, since its inception, at 21:00 (GMT +11, +9, +7, +5 and +3, as the programme is recorded live five times due to Russia's large size and variety of time zones). During the Soviet era, the programme was also carried simultaneously on the primary channel of each republican station (Channel 1 of the Kiev Telecentre, LTV1, Kazakhstan-1, Eesti Televisioon, Lithuanian National Radio and Television, Channel One Belarus, Uzbekistan 1, Georgian Public Broadcasting, Azeri Television etc.) The broadcast lasts 30 minutes, but in special circumstances (more especially during the Soviet era), the broadcast is extended beyond the 30 minutes allotted when necessary (such as the Red Square state ceremonies and parades, CPSU Party Congress telecasts together with other CPSU-led activities, plenary sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and deaths of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko). Even highlights of the celebrations of the Union-wide holidays were also broadcast.

Starting in the mid-1970s, another 30-minute edition was presented on the All-Union Programme (launched in 1956) around 11:00pm.(This was in the form of a live simulcast of Vremya in the next Orbita transmission zone, occasionally a repeat of the 9:00pm programme, especially in the European USSR.) Prior to that, both channels aired Vremya simultaneously at 9:00pm, then repeated the next morning when the First Programme signed on around 7:30am (later 6:30am) after the exercise programme, before airing children's programming and schools and colleges programmes, all produced together with the USSR Ministry of Education and were also seen on Programme 4. Later, a live morning edition was shown at 6:30am, before the breakfast programme 120 minut (which continues today on Channel One Russia as Dobroye Utro, Russian:Доброе утро).

News summaries were added as the transmissions increased during the day. There was a bulletin at the end of the morning and midday programmes (i.e. around 1:00pm) and another at 6:30pm on the first channel. From 1989, the latter bulletin began to use the two presenter format of Vremya, as well as the Vremya moniker, and its corresponding studio and graphics (including the title sequence), looking as it was the program's first edition (the 6:30 am program was the morning news edition while the one at 1PM was the midday update), with the 9:00 pm telecast as the second edition and the one at 11:00 pm as the third or late edition or the late night replay. The All-Union Programme's daytime schedule always began with the news at around 15:00. Midnight newscasts didn't appear until the 1980s, when the First Programme screened a headline update preceding the closedown sequence, usually after midnight. All of these bulletins were known as Novosti (Russian:Новости, "The News"). From 1989, the 15:00 news round-up on the All-Union Programme and the midnight news round-up on the First Programme were known as TSN: Television News Service (Russian:TCH:Телевизионная служба новостей, TSN:Televizionnaya sluzhba novostey). Today the news on Channel One Russia follows a similar schedule to this one, with Vremya, TSN and the all-Russian and regional news updates.

The majority of Russians rely on Vremya as a trusted news source.

From 1986 until the present, Vremya has used the theme song from Time, Forward! as its signature tune and opening sequence.

In a two week test that lasted from February 12, 1989 to February 26, more than 100 television stations across the United States broadcast Vremya. The test was coordinated by WGBH-TV.