Why ‘Survivor’ trumps ‘The Apprentice’ in Russia

Peter Pomerantsev, a Russian-born British writer living in London, was a very young man when he was hired to come to Moscow to help create and produce Western-style reality TV shows. It was the early 2000s, a time when Russian commercial television was just taking off after decades of drab Sovietski state TV and some amatereur stabs at commercial television in the Boris Yeltsin era.

But by the early 2000s, the Russian oligarchs who owned the channels and their Kremlin collaborators, saw the chance for big profits. Given their own inexperience, they turned to British and American producers whom they were convinced had the “Midas touch” when it came to creating cheap and financially promising programming, reality TV shows in particular.

Last night Pomerantsev — author of the new book “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” — spoke on the NewsHour about what he learned from his inside perch, about the “insidious” way Russian authorities use all television programming, political or entertainment, to manipulate Russian public opinion at home and as a “weapon of war” abroad.

But he also has some intriguing observations about why knock-offs of some Western reality TV hits — like “The Apprentice” — flopped in Russia, while others — like “Survivor” — were wildly successful. The reasons, he said, are deeply rooted in Russians’ shared culture and experience, past and present.