The first projects of the Norilsk TV center developed in 1953, but at that time all efforts of builders went to the combine facilities and residential buildings. The Medstroy office came to the site on the hill near Utinoe lake in early 1958. On February 19, excavators dug ditches for main building of the television center.
The Norilsk TV Center was declared a people’s construction site with the participation of volunteers. According to the builders’s memoirs, that object was completely new for them, like the space! After all, Norilsk people had never had to do anything like that before. The entire technical part and the installation was carried out by the communications engineers of the combine, it’s still a subject of their pride.
The TV center was built urgently, all the construction and finishing work was promised to be done by the 40th anniversary of Komsomol – October 29. The installation of the equipment had to be completed in 1958. And in the new, 1959, Norilsk people were promised to watch the first TV show. And the promise was kept, although, there was no time to lay water supply to the television center and finished it in 1959.
The Norilsk television center’s first test program was conducted on December 31, 1958. That day is considered the Norilsk television’s birthday. Until November 1967, there was no central television in Norilsk, and the Norilsk television studio offered all variety of television programs to the townspeople: it talked about the leaders of the combine, life in Norilsk, filmed concerts and performances of the drama theater.
During the year the Norilsk people purchased about five thousand television sets. A television studio was also opened in the city, it installed televisions, indoor and outdoor antennas at the expense of the owners.
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Text: Svetlana Samokhina Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
