REN TV (Russian: РЕН ТВ) is a Russian free-to-air television network. It was founded on 1 January 1997 by Irena Lesnevskaya and her son, Dmitry Lesnevsky, who had been running REN TV as a production house for other national Russian television channels. Though it focuses mostly on audiences aged between 18 and 45 years old, the network offers programming for a wide range of demographics. REN TV's network is a patchwork of 406 independent broadcasting companies in Russia and the CIS. REN TV's signal is received in 718 towns and cities in Russia - from Kaliningrad in the West to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the East. It has a potential audience of 113.5 million viewers (officially 120 million viewers) with more than 12 million of them living in Moscow city and Moscow Oblast (Moscow Region). REN TV works with 10 broadcaster affiliates and 19 cable operators in the CIS and the Baltic states; 181 cities can receive REN TV's signal. It is one of the twenty national television channels on the national digital terrestrial platform, being available on the second multiplex (corresponding to channels 11 to 20), on channel 11. Historically the network was defined for its opposition stance, however, gradually starting in 2005, and rapidly from 2011, it began to push itself closer to the officialist narrative, a move which was criticized by TV critics. In the past, the channel was an entertainment channel, though since the early 2010s, coinciding with its new political alignment, a substantial amount of its original programming consists of documentaries with fictionalized theories, alternate history, extraterrestrials and criticism of events such as the ones in Ukraine or opposition in Russia. The conspiracy-based programming line entered into full bloom in 2017, now taking a large amount of its schedule. REN TV also has an international version, created in 2016.
Ownership Until 1 July 2005 the channel belonged to its founder Irena Lesnevskaya and her son (30%) and the Russian utility RAO UES headed by Anatoly Chubais. In 2005 Bertelsmann's RTL bought 30% of REN TV with steel maker Severstal and oil and natural gas company Surgutneftegaz each buying 35%. Severstal's Alexey Germanovich on 18 December 2006 ceded the chairperson of REN TV's board to Lyubov Sovershaeva, President Vladimir Putin's former deputy envoy to the North-West federal okrug and chairperson of the board at ABRos Investments, a subsidiary of St Petersburg's Russia bank. ABRos had bought a considerable stake in REN. The bank, whose chairman, Yury Kovalchuk, was a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, owned 38% of its home town's TRK Petersburg TV channel – and was likely to buy more of that company, analysts had told 19 December 2006's Kommersant-daily. REN TV and TRK Petersburg would merge into a single media holding, though they would operate independently, industry observers had told the daily. Russian media had reported that oil and gas group Surgutneftegaz had sold its stake in the channel to ABRos, which had increased its stake in the media company from 45% to 70%. '[T]here are indications that Bertelsmann was interested in selling up, after about 18 months in the Russian TV market,' the broadcasting news website added. Currently National Media Group owns 82%, and Russian state oil company Gazprom subsidiary SOGAZ owns 18%.
History
Production company The history of REN TV is connected to the effects of the August Coup, when former heads of Soviet Central Television Irena Lesenskaya and her son Dimitri decided to create their production company. The company was registered under the name «ЛИС и С» («Лесневская Ирена Стефановна и сын») on 19 August 1991, but due to political chaos, as well as a similar name being registered at the time («ЛИС’С», Sergey Lisovskiy), the registration was delayed. Two weeks after the coup the company was registered under the name «REN» (formally registered on 1 October 1991). Its first programs were Astrological Forecast (13 November 1991, RTR) and the Christmas special The Irony of Fate, or Merry Christmas) (24 December 1991, First Channel of CT SSSR, days before its dissolution). These two were followed by other productions for national channels, such as To Those Who Remember, Rost's Stable, Man-to-Man Talk from Eldar Ryazanov to Boris Yeltsin Dog-Show: Me and My Dog and The White Woodpecker Club. At the time of founding, its staff consisted of only nine people, though ten years later, it rose to over 500.
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