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A letter of commendation from the President was awarded to the channel’s team for the substantial contribution to the development of national television. Vladimir Putin presented the award to NTV General Director Alexei Zemsky.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I would like to congratulate you all on the occasion of this anniversary. 25 years is a long time.

Strangely enough, I remember so well how the company started because it was during the period that I worked in St Petersburg myself. NTV’s first programmes, Itogi (Digest) and Segodnya (Today) aired on Channel Five because NTV founder and director came to St Petersburg, met with the mayor and asked for airtime. And the-then St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak instructed Channel Five managers to give NTV an hour. This is essentially how NTV got started. In this sense, we come from the same city. It is a great pleasure for me to congratulate you, representatives of the company that was founded in my home city, on this remarkable date.

NTV developed with the country; it moved forward and lived through the same troubles. Of course, very soon it became a nationwide channel, thanks to its people’s talent, creativity plus passion, and perhaps also luck. But I am certain that the main prerequisite was of course your professionalism together with the professionalism of your predecessors.

There are people here today who stood at the origins of this company and established notable traditions. Excellent professionals thrived and became successful and such people continue to grow in your team preserving the company’s trademark style.

These days, NTV is not only a television channel but also a modern digital media. NTV has a huge number of subscribers, I think I would be right in saying, more than 3 million people, or 3.3 million, which is more than any other nationwide channels. This is another quality indicator, absolutely.

You are not forgetting the educational and informative mission of the mass media and you are successful in this path bringing a lot of benefits to the country as well as the people. I would like to thank you all for that. Once again, congratulations.

I wish you all the very best. Thank you all for your hard work.

A letter of commendation from the President of the Russian Federation is being presented.

Vladimir Putin: (Addressing Alexei Zemsky.) Also, happy birthday to you.

NTV General Director Alexei Zemsky: Thank you.

Twenty-five years is our first big anniversary. I would like to add that for 25 years, NTV has also served as an alma mater educating many television professionals and sharing them generously with all the other television companies.

There are former NTV workers in every single news service. Ten out of twenty federal channel managers came from NTV. So this is a big day for everybody who has ever worked for NTV.

Thank you so much for your congratulations.

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