Tomorrow Severny Gorod is celebrating its birthday. On May 30, 1998, a television channel named the same started broadcasting in Norilsk. 22 years has been a long way , and now SG consists of several dffices: a television channel, Taimyr Telegraph news agency, Autoradio Norilsk and Europa Plus Norilsk radio stations, and Severny Gorod media portal. Igor ASTAPOV, the general director of the company, told about the present and the plans.
– Igor Yuryevich, why are there so many media formats in a rather small information field?
– I’ve been working in Severny Gorod from its first day. I had worked for three years and left Norilsk. Мy successor Natalya Oleinikova headed the well-established, popular in the city but very compact company – a little more than twenty people. Only television worked, while the radio stations and Taimyr Telegraph were just intentions. Of course, now I am heading an entirely different Severny Gorod, the one that Sergey Panchenko made. His essential role in the development of the company is obvious.
Why are there so many media outlets? The logic is simple. Any media that is interesting to the audience, does not bring losses and is attractive for journalists has the right to life. In addition, the information field of Norilsk is not so small. This is the second largest city in the Krasnoyarsk region, and serious competition exists only among FM radio stations. There are over a dozen of them, and it’s more than in Krasnoyarsk and Moscow. But the local TV channel is the only one. Social networks in Norilsk are well developed , but there are few professional information accounts there. So I do not think the information field of the city is overloaded, there is still free space for the media.
– What is the main goal of the company?
– Every person has a set of basic values - safety, health, education. The desire to understand life is very important: a person feels bad when he does not understand what is happening around. The task of the media is to tell what is happening. Even our music radio stations have short news releases.
Text: Olga Litvinenko, Photo: Nikolay Schipko
