New Year’s Eve Digital TV Will Be Working Miracles Across Russia’s 11 Time Zones
Good news about the upcoming New Year's Eve.
On this day and on this night the progress in digital television will allow all inhabitants of the country to watch The Irony of Fate, The Blue Light, and the President's congratulations at the announced time on the TV channel Russia 1.
Not everyone realizes that until now it was not so. Millions of Russians celebrated New Year's Eve, local time and took the President's congratulations either one hour before or one hour after midnight. Yes, eleven time zones set uneasy tasks. And one of them, on the festive evening of December 31, is now solved.
Aleksandr Rudenko-on how it will be done.
Russia has the most complicated television system in the World. The country is huge. 11 time zones.
It was necessary to adapt the airtime of the channels to local time so that the morning shows helped people in Vladivostok to wake up in the morning instead of night and the results of the day were summed up at 20:00 like in Moscow. A special system of double broadcasting was created for this purpose. Five absolutely identical on-air versions differ from each other only in the offset from Moscow Standard Time: two, four, six and eight hours.
A unique system works without failures for half a century and the television itself is booming.
Entertaining and scientific programs, films and, of course, the news became color in the 80's. In the early 2000s, VGTRK channels were among the first to switch to the broadcasting and we started to see more. And recently the picture on TV screens has become so clear that you can see even the smallest details in the background.
Branch network of the media holding VGTRK is being equipped at a state-of-the-art level: new equipment rooms, studios, cameras, and light allowed to create a television product of the highest quality in the regions too.
Dmitriy Mozolyuk, head of the VGTRK Kuban branch in Sochi: "Another colossal breakthrough was the possibility for regional branches to broadcast in the package of digital multiplex channels. This expanded the broadcasting zone, the coverage of the population and, equally important, did not lower the picture quality.
Diana Vasilova, newscaster of Vesti-Tatarstan: "Our on-site operators need to prepare better for the shooting now, to stage layouts, edit video footage. TV presenters take double responsibility, especially women because we're meticulous about the image. At such high definition, all the defects become visible".
TV viewers have already got used to the high quality of broadcasting and the double broadcasting system. December 31 is the only day of the year when the picture on the screen doesn't coincide with the local time.
The inhabitants of the odd time zones where the time difference with Moscow is +1, +3, +5, +7 and +9 hear the main New Year's events: the President's congratulation and the chime of bells not at midnight, but at 11 p.m. or 1 a.m. There are 11 time zones and only 5 takes.
30 million viewers from Kamchatka, Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, and Omsk have already got used to it and celebrate the holiday twice.
So it was for fifty years. But this year everything will change. Channel Russia 1 prepared an amazing gift for its audience on December 31. This New Year's surprise is the launch of six additional odd takes. It means that people in these regions will be able to watch the President's congratulation just before midnight when the New Year comes.
Victor Pinchuk, deputy CEO of RTRS:
"We could implement it just now after digital TV-network was put in place. Here you can see these 11 time zones. Samara, Omsk. People there always had to watch the President's congratulation either at 11 pm or at midnight."
So on December 31, everyone will see the festive TV program on the TV channel Russia 1 in accordance with local time. All technical services are ready for this task.
For the first time in the country's history, everyone will see the President's congratulation on the channel Russia 1 at midnight. Not one hour before or one hour after midnight. And the chime of bells on the Spasskaya Tower will announce the approach of 2018.
Aleksandr Rudenko, Yuri Gonchar, Anton Musikyan, Aleksandr Sidorov and Anton Zagorskiy, Vesty Weekly