Moscow Orientation – Day 7 – Live from Moscow!

On Sunday, we attended the broadcast of a morning television talk show at Ostankino, the main studio in the city. The program was “Vremena” hosted by Vladimir Posner, a roundtable discussion with 4 guests.

We didn’t know the topic or who the guests were when we arrived. But there was plenty to entertain us in the interim. We were all in suits and looking business like as instructed. The rest of the audience was mixed - except for the dozen young girls from some university, with their tight clothing and midriff baring outfits. They all decided they wanted coffee at the same time I did, and stood in line debating the merits of various beverages while scrubbing up money from each other. It was a tedious ordeal to wait through despite the fact that, I may have mentioned, they were a dozen young girls from some university with tight clothing and midriff baring outfits. Coffee, after all, is coffee.

A tiny old woman with enormous round black framed-glasses came out of nowhere and ordered us into the studio. She snapped and snarled at everyone in turn, in groups and individually. She was a real pitbull. We were ushered in first, and she told every one to stand aside as she took the foreigners in. “Ladies, stand aside. I’m not going to repeat myself.” Then, she seated each person individually in the studio, matching heights with camera placements and some sort of secret, indecipherable code of aesthetics. Snapping and snarling continued all the while. It was so vicious that the audience members all began to see the humor in it and got a big laugh when she attacked one guy who muttered under his breath: “I prefer to be addressed face to face, so if you have something to say, don’t turn your head to the left and then talk. Thank you.”

Vladimir Posner came out and started the show. The panel was charged with discussing the problem of attacks on foreigners in Russia – a hot topic in light of several murders of students in various cities across Russia. There were interesting opinions all around the table, except for one guest who noted that we never hear about the thousands of Russians being killed by foreigners all the time. The rest of the panel attacked him on that one, since it was complete nonsense, and then proceeded to ignore him for the rest of the show. Many of the proposed solutions sounded like similar solutions to different problems: better education; reform of the police force, judicial reform; more comprehensive laws.

The show was well done, with very high production value. It was an enjoyable and interesting discussion to watch, even though I’m not much of a fan of the Sunday morning format. We have a meeting scheduled with Posner on Tuesday, and I’m very much looking forward to it.