MTV Europe wins the first contract to broadcast to the Soviet Union (LA times)

MOSCOW — Starting today, Leningrad cable television viewers can tune in around-the-clock to the same music videos that millions of people are watching simultaneously in 25 other countries.

MTV has made it as the first foreign television channel to contract to broadcast to the Soviet Union.

“It’s a real breakthrough,” William Roedy, managing director and chief executive officer of MTV Europe, said on Thursday. “One of MTV’s mottoes is, ‘breaking down barriers,’ and this is one more wall that has come down and that will be impossible to build up again.”

MTV will be broadcast 24 hours a day over Leningrad Cable Television, which is now received by 140,000 households, or about half a million viewers, Roedy said.

“MTV is one of the few programs that can cross international cultural and language barriers--music is the international language,” Roedy said in a telephone interview from Leningrad. “We’re being compared to Czar Peter the Great for opening (for Russia) a window on the world.”

The programing will be paid for by Lenceltel, a joint venture of the Leningrad City Council and Rutter-Dunn Communications Inc. of Columbus, Ohio.

“Like lots of other Soviet broadcasters, we used to pirate MTV programs,” Boris P. Belyayev, deputy general director of Leningrad Cable Television, said. “Now we have legal right to the programs.”

For about a year, MTV has been broadcasting a one-hour program every Friday night across the country on state television. But the signing of a five-year agreement between MTV and Lenceltel on Tuesday opened the way for MTV to be broadcast by satellite from London, where MTV Europe is based.

“This was a huge step, a major step, but we’d like to think this is just a beginning for MTV in the Soviet Union,” Roedy said.

Roedy traveled to the Baltic republic of Lithuania on Thursday to meet with representatives of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia television stations, which have all shown interest in MTV.

In its three years, MTV Europe has spread to 21 million households in 25 countries, Roedy said.

Although the main language of MTV Europe is English, the program’s staff comes from 14 countries, so the show has a more international flavor than the American version. It also shows videos from a wider assortment of European artists than the American counterpart.

Initially, there will be no translation provided for MTV in Leningrad, but some translation may be added in the future, according to Yuri A. Gerasimov, deputy director of Lenceltel.

MTV already enjoys wide popularity among Soviet teen-agers and young adults, who will be targeted as the main audience for the new 24-hour cable channel, Gerasimov added.

“But this is not just a musical event but also a political event,” Gerasimov said. “For decades, rock was restricted here. Now Leningraders can tune into rock videos 24 hours a day. It’s a big success of perestroika and democratization.”

Before Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev started his reform programs, rock was officially criticized as a bad influence from the capitalist West and often suppressed.

So rock lovers quenched their thirst for music in underground rock clubs, by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts from the West and by buying Beatles and Rolling Stones records on the black market.

Edward Rutter, an American partner of Lenceltel, and Roedy said they have met with no significant obstacles from Soviet authorities in setting up MTV on Leningrad Cable Television, despite a crackdown on the Soviet media in the last few months.

“I was a little concerned at first,” Roedy said. “But nothing has happened to make me think there is going to be any censorship.”

Rutter would not disclose how much money his joint venture will pay MTV, but specified that payment will be made in British pounds, based on the number of subscribers that Leningrad Cable Television has, at a rate similar to those charged in European countries.

Since Soviet currency, the ruble, is not convertible and Leningraders pay for cable television with rubles, Lenceltel will pay its fees to MTV with hard currency profits from other projects. These include foreign advertising in other media, such as billboards around the city, and the manufacture of cable television equipment for export.

MTV is just the beginning of the cable network Lenceltel has planned for Leningrad Cable Television, which had one independent station before MTV started to broadcast. The next channel to be launched will probably be children’s programing, Rutter said.