In late March I had a meeting with Daniil Borisovich Dondurey, the well-known culture expert, editor-in-chief of the Art of Cinema magazine and simply an amazing man. He’s also a member of the National Media Group Public Council, so we had lots of things to discuss. But the main thing, and something that we just couldn’t stop talking about, was television!

The meeting was a productive one. Daniil Borisovich not only told me what he thinks of the state of affairs in television and cinema today, but also gave me some very specific practical advice on the work of the Public Council. And you know, in 2007, 53% of Russians never read a single book. This is a shocking statistic…

It turns out that for many people television is one of the main ways of spending their free time. Over 100 million people watch TV every day, and this means it’s especially important to make TV not only entertaining, but educational as well. My meeting with Daniil convinced me of this even more.