VID (TV Company)

VID is a Russian TV Company that makes the show Wait for Me, designed to help people find their loved ones and also Pole Chudes which is a Russian version of Wheel of Fortune.

History

The VID TV Company was found in 1990 by Vladislav Listyev when he tried to make his show Vsglyad more funded. Vsglyad means "glance" in Russian as the show was intended to be a critical glance on Soviet political life. VID is an abbreviation of "Vsglyad I Drugiye" or "Vsglyad And Others". Coincidentally, "vid" also means "view" (a word similar to "glance") in Russian. The VID TV company was not able to obtain a separate channel but instead had to base itself on the state First Channel. Listyev later found some other programs including Rush Hour, Field of Wonder, Guess the Melody and Star Hour.

In 1995 Listyev went to work on ORT. He was later killed. VID was then headed by Aleksandr Lyubimov.

VID allowed many celebrities to advance their careers: Sergei Bodrov Jr. was the dictor of Vsglyad after Listyev and Lyubimov, Leonid Yakubovich became a comic figure due to his Field of Wonder appearances and Valdis Pelsh was the dictor of Guess the Melody (himself being a musician). Now the program Wait for Me is led by actor Igor Kvasha.

Logo

As the USSR was crumbling the VID TV Company decided that (what was about to be known as) a shocking symbol was appropriate for its logo. They hence chose the, what would become known as, (the) Vid Mask. It was introduced by Vladislav Listyev in 1990 when the company was formed. It is a stone mask (allegedly of Guo Xiang, a Taoist philosopher) that was copied directly from the Museum of Eastern Art in Moscow. The museum then filed complaints to the company. To get themselves out of hot water, the mask was altered using CGI.

The mask resembled something very scary [http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5:%D0%9B%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B8%D0%92%D0%98D.jpg] (a somewhat demented version of a man's face) and many complaints from children followed as they were extremely frightened to see the horrible mask appearing each time they watched their favorite show. To add to the fright, it was accompanied by horror music (five-note music; tum-tee, tum-tee, tum!) and bright flashes of black and white light. The flashes were removed in 1999 due to epilepsy concerns and in 2002 the mask was made smaller and placed on a yellow screen instead of a black screen (a black screen inducing more fear due to color contrast).

Originally the logo consisted of the following: a ball is bouncing on a trampoline, falls off and is augmented in size to fill the screen. It then changes colors from black to white two times and then gray Vid Mask appears and "ВИD" is written underneath. A more meticulous version of the logo (using relatively advanced computer graphics for the time) had a man hitting the ball with a pool pole.

The VID mask stirred a great deal of controversy in Russia and many children had psychological problems like phobias because of it. There were petitions to terminate its exposition. In 1999 the flashing lights were removed due to epilepsy complications. The scary music was also removed and a new logo was introduced: a match is lit and the VID mask is formed from smoke.

In 2000 this was replaced by the tiny VID mask on a black and yellow background. Logo specialists have said that a smaller VID mask exposure causes less fright.

There have also been claims ( [http://community.livejournal.com/advertka/5682496.html?thread=81578304#t81578304] )of the mask's similarity to the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin or a death mask. Some people throught it was, the face of Leonid Yakubovich, the second host of Pole Chudes, the russian adaption of "Wheel of fortune".

External links

* [http://www.vid.ru/texts/home.htm Official website of VID]
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=DEMwrKQXJiw Youtube video of the original logo]
* [http://community.livejournal.com/advertka/5682496.html Discussion group focusing on the psychological damage of the logo]
* [http://vkontakte.ru/club926425] Another discussion group on the vkontakte.ru (a facebook clone) website.