I think it was 1988 when in my district in Moscow they began to lay lines. Naturally, everyone was curious, but the answers were vague: it seemed those were the lines for a cable TV channel.
Indeed they were, and this was the beginning of the “2×2”, Russia’s first commercial TV channel. The Wikipedia tells us the channel didn’t start broadcasting before September 1990, but my memory, which thankfully is still quite good, whispers that the channel began to broadcast before that date, perhaps already in 1988, and most definitely was already working in 1989. It is true that it evolved significantly between 1993, when it signed a contract with MTV Europe to translate some shows, and 1997 when it closed down.
Looking back at this time, I should say that all this wasn’t always a fine departure from the Soviet culture. Since the mid-1980s there were TV shows where they showed you the clips of such bands and artists, as Erasure, David Bowie; if I’m not mistaken, it was in the 1980s that I first glimpsed the laser music wizard, Jean-Michel Jarre. But the cable TV channel was in a different league. Something tells me that prior to 1990 this cable TV channel that I and my classmates saw being laid was broadcasting if not illegally then certainly with the range much wider than the Wiki describes. That preliminary stage is well imprinted in my mind for the sheer lack of censorship. My classmates were scared as hell but still watched Nosferatu and many other horror films. I tried to watch one of those films, too, but wasn’t very successful. There was no chance to stop kids from watching these movies because the film screenings would start at around 6pm.
I wasn’t successful with horror films (I was too afraid), but naturally I and my friends at school were quite interested in the films about the various aspects of procreation, and boy were we not disappointed! By the late 1980s there were quite a lot of families (in my district, at least) where they’d have several TV sets, one of these being in the children’s room. It was somewhat different in the case of my family, but nevertheless one evening I tried to watch Zalman King’s Two Moon Junction. I didn’t go too far watching it because my Grandma had a habit of checking if I was in the dreamland before she could succumb to sleep, so I was trying to watch the film while also tuning into her footsteps. Eventually, it just got too much, so I turned the TV off. But other children were luckier, and in the day at school they sometimes discussed what they saw the evening before. When my parents, who were by then divorced, found out about these conversations, they undertook a joint effort and each in their own way told me about sex as an occupation of two people in love and that there was no need to laugh at anything.
The point, however, is that such films were being shown to a very young audience. Only a few years after the story I’ve just told the same channel showed another film. It must’ve been the case of my doing the room with the TV working in the background, so I wasn’t watching the film. To this day I don’t know the name of it, and I have no idea whether or not it contained any X-rated scenes. I do remember though that it was daylight, and the scene I recall was of this couple riding in a car, when a woman made an indecent proposal to the man. Next moment she dived somewhere…
Obviously, these days I understand the whole meaning of the scene which back then had left me startled. But to take our mind off wondering at how such films could only be shown in daytime I’ll say that the film was dubbed, and the interpreter’s male (and very nasal) voice was jamming all phrases into one, so the whole impression of the scene is rather amusing to me.
The 2×2 channel has made a comeback to the airwaves in 2002, but since 2007 has been airing predominantly animated series. To check which ones, follow this link. From the drop-down menu on the right you can browse the English titles of the series. I’m afraid the synopsis will still be in Russian, but if you’re watching The Simpsons anyway, you don’t need to know what it’s about. 🙂