Programs about Books and Reading in Central Television

Abstract

For a long time, various programs about books and reading appeared on TV and then disappeared. They were lost in the TV broadcasting and programs among other programs, cinema films and TV movies. And when programs were closed, they were quickly forgotten. The purpose of this article is to reveal all such TV programs. The author studied the period of more than 50 years. The article gives the names of TV shows about books and reading, belonging to certain channels, and the time of airing. As possible, the author discloses their intent, concepts, content and the names of TV presenters. The sources for the article were weekly bulletins about TV programs, and in the last 30 years — also articles, notes, interviews in professional and general periodicals.In Soviet times, there were TV programs “In the world of books”, “Bookshop”, “Reading circle”. In 1978—1979, the TV presenter of the “Reading circle” was N.M. Sikorsky, then Director of the V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR. In post-Soviet Russia, there got more broadcasts of that kind. These were both educational programs (“Book yard”, “Graphoman”, “Exlibris”, “Book storehouse”) and numerous commercial ones (“Bookstore”, “Home library”, “Bibliomania”, “World of books with Leonid Kuravlev”, “Book news”, “Book world”). The author gives more details are tells about the program “Graphoman”, which was invented and presented by A.N. Shatalov, the poet, critic and publisher. The program originated in 1994 and was broadcast on various channels for more than 10 years. Programs of the recent years are “Book for breakfast”, “Various Readings”, “Words order”, “Figure of speech”, “Pro-Reading”, “Book measurement”, “What to read?”. For over half a century, television actively supported the initiators and creators of various programs that promoted books and reading. This activity has slightly declined in recent years. But viewers continue to learn from the TV screen about new books and watch events in the book industry.