RADIO SILENCE
Last Tuesday (March 17, 1998) about a hundred young philosophers,
artists and music fans gathered in southern Moscow to mark the fourth birthday
of their beloved indie radio station, Radio Rakurs,
which can rightfully be called a successor to Russia's first post-perestroika
independent radio project, SNC. But the celebration was far less festive than
last year's: few of the attendees believe that Rakurs,
off the air since January 1 due to non-payment for its transmitter, will
recapture its place on the dial. "A good party, but a little like dancing
on tombstones," joked a former disc jockey.
Rakurs' uniqueness - both as a creative venture and a
fledgling media project of Russia's early capitalist era - hinged from the
outset on its non-commercial status, which the station managed to maintain for
all four years of its existence. On one hand, the station's birth was fantasy
turned reality: the funding came from an aspiring young businessman eager to
promote Russian culture and willing to afford the staff complete artistic
freedom. On the other hand, it reflected an interaction often encountered
during the country's emerging-markets phase: traditional Russian intellect
meets new Russian capital, but neither has the managerial know-how or
entrepreneurial drive to fuse the two halves synergistically and produce a
sustainable project. That Rakurs survived as long as
it did is quite amazing in itself.
The station's pre-history stretches back nearly a decade, to the time
when Gorbachev's winds of change started sweeping across Russia. Perestroika
was in the air ... and gradually reached the airwaves. In 1989, those whose
ears were eager for more than official radio could offer got a new alternative,
Europa Plus, and this kept the masses satisfied for a
time. But two years later, those Muscovites who were young at heart and in the
know, and craved for less of a pop-music feel, started tuning their receivers
to a remote location on the AM dial. There, you could hear the freshest music,
from the latest underground Russian rock to western retro unknown to the Soviet
listener; or you might be lulled to sleep with night-time reading, from
new-wave poetry to "Lord of the Rings" or Ursula LeGuin.
This elite listening experience was part of the multifaceted music
project known as SNC - Stas Namin
Corporation. Namin became widely known in the mid-70s
as the lead man of the unorthodox but state-sanctioned rock band Tsvety, or Flowers, which made its name performing cover
versions of hits by western rock giants such as Zeppelin, Deep Purple and the
like. Thanks to his renown, charisma and connections, Namin was able to attract patrons to the project and,
adding some of his own savings, created the archetype of an alternative,
not-for-profit rock station. But Namin's first major
attempt in the culture business apparently proved unsatisfying and he soon
moved on to greener pastures: after about two years, Namin's
enthusiasm fizzled, as did his fund-raising efforts, and in 1992 the station
folded.
Nonetheless, a core team of SNC enthusiasts felt the need to carry on.
Headed by Sergei Golyamin, the station's resident expert on
Russian music, they actively searched for a sponsor who would help them
recapture the free, creative spirit of SNC and eventually came upon their
enigmatic young donor, Andrei Scherbakov, the
president of AO Kurs, a trader in industrial-capacity
engines.
Why this dedicated gentleman agreed to finance an independent radio
station - and continued to support it for nearly four years - remains something
of a mystery. Oleg Chilap, who became the station's chief
editor in May 1996, recalls kitchen-table guesswork sessions on the reasons for
Scherbakov's generosity: "'What does he want
from this?' we would ask ourselves. You don't run for president on AM..."
Some of those involved with the project speculate that Scherbakov's
original intention was to run for city government and to use the station as his
mouthpiece. But this goal seems to have remained in the theoretical stage.
First of all, the frequency occupied by Rakurs was
expensive to rent, but inaudible throughout most of Moscow and, hence, useless
as an instrument of wielding influence. Second, the station's broadcasts
included no hint of politics or economics, no lobbying for this or that
oligarch; there were just musical and cultural programs, from jazz to
symphonies, from book reviews to philosophy. Scherbakov
occasionally protested that Rakurs was
"omnivorous," that it lacked a unified format, but he had agreed from
the very beginning not to interfere in the staff's "creative process"
and largely stood by his word. Finally, soon after the 1996 presidential
elections, AO Kurs and, consequently, its pet
subsidiary Radio Rakurs started experiencing
financial difficulties. Wages - as small as they were - were held up for months
at a time and this state of affairs, albeit with some fluctuations for better
and worse, continued for a year and a half.
Mr. Scherbakov refused to comment for this
article; however, a company spokeswoman explained that her employer funded Rakurs as a philanthropist, but currently intends to sell
the station due to the strain it places on Kurs'
budget. "It just eats up money," she complained. Taken together,
comments by Rakurs staff and the plaint by Mr. Scherbakov's assistant lead one to believe that the
businessman's support for the radio station may have been sincere, but was not
very well calculated.
Surely, the sponsor did not want his new acquisition to become a
permanent charity case and a hopeless drain on his company's finances, yet no
active efforts were made to turn the station into a sustainable business
venture. All promotional work was left in the hands of the staff, who, by Chilap's admission, were "fantastic people, but
completely clueless about how to make money." Advertisements were
solicited via the barter system and a concrete person to head up this activity
was never appointed by management - when such an individual did appear, she
turned out to be a devoted listener who came to the station as a volunteer a
year and a half before it went off the air. Such a passive approach was clearly
suicidal, especially since competition had become much more intense since the
years of SNC, with hip FM stations proliferating like rabbits by the mid-90s.
The fate of Radio Rakurs as an investment
project is faintly reminiscent of the protracted conflict surrounding the Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper -
fortunately, without the scandal and bitter feelings. In both instances,
commercial institutions without major strategic interests in media decided to
try their luck with a new area of investment. And in both cases, capital failed
to assess the effort required to make the project a viable one.
Objectively speaking, independent media in Russia is the rarest of
anomalies, and Radio Rakurs was one of the few
examples. The station was tiny and apolitical and, for a time, it occupied a
particular niche among a small but promising audience of Moscow's youth. While
it is truly refreshing to learn that there are wealthy businessmen willing to
give creative, intelligent young people the proverbial fish ("Give a man a
fish, he eats for a day..."), it would be even better if there were
experienced managers willing to teach them that time-honored art of fishing,
which would allow them to "eat for a lifetime."
Natalia EFREMOVA
(«Moscow
News», issue 11, 1998)