For many years, the TV talk show hosted by Savik Shuster was the epicenter of Ukrainian politics — at least, of its public part.
The must-see show hosted everyone, including presidents. Political careers were made in its studio.
Now, after several years off screen, Shuster has returned to Ukrainian television. He is arriving at a time when Ukrainian media are trying to figure out how to cover President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration.
With full control over the parliament and government, a powerful social media presence, vast show production resources, and huge support from the public, Zelensky and his team say they don’t need traditional media to reach out to Ukrainians.
Still, when Shuster’s comeback show premiered on the Ukraina TV channel on Sept. 6, politicians, including those from the new administration, flocked to its studio just like in the good old days.
“I am so tense and nervous as if I have never done it before,” Shuster told the Kyiv Post backstage on Sep. 6. “I feel like I don’t know what’s going on in the country. Everything is new, new people, new faces.”
Diverse guests
The lineup of guests was a political combination rarely seen on Ukrainian television, where the amount of airtime granted to a certain politician on a TV channel depends on his or her affiliation with the media owner.
Take Yuriy Boyko, co-leader of pro-Russian parliamentary opposition, who appears only on TV channels loyal to his party. Yet he came on Shuster’s show and sat down next to his ideological opponents — Andriy Biletsky, leader of the National Corps nationalist party, and Artur Herasymov, a close ally of ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
Brought together in one studio, they did not clash with one another, but instead collectively funneled their criticism against the star of the show: Andriy Bohdan, Zelensky’s chief of staff.
Sporting a huge grin, Bohdan listened to their diatribes. The administration official almost never gives interviews, let alone takes part in live debates.
When the time came for him to respond, he pulled no punches.
“You promised to lift lawmakers’ immunity for 27 years. We did it in one week. If you are so smart, if you talk so much and read laws, why didn’t you do a bloody thing?” was his response to lawmaker Herasymov, who accused Bohdan and Zelensky of “usurpation of power.”
Verbal attacks on his past as an anti-corruption envoy in the administration of disgraced ex- President Viktor Yanukovych had no apparent effect on him either.
When Boyko, a former minister in Yanukovych’s government, lambasted Bohdan for “the wrong priorities on the legislative agenda,” he retorted scathingly:
“I worked under the rule of the Party of Regions. You had full power: the president, the parliamentary majority, the government. You were in the government yourself. Why didn’t you pass those laws which you demand we pass so quickly?”
Bohdan’s last opponent of the night was Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, whom the Cabinet fired from his post as head of the city administration at the request of Zelensky’s office. Traditionally the elected mayor also holds that post, but Zelensky wants to appoint a new city administration head to oversee Klitschko.
Klitschko said that he wasn’t holding onto the position, and his dismissal was wrong from a legal point of view.
“Do you know what the budget of Prague is? $2,800,000,” said Bohdan. “And do you know what the budget of Kyiv is? $2,200,000. Where is our Prague?”
When Klitschko responded with another set of numbers demonstrating how the city budget has grown over four years of his leadership, Bohdan retorted: “You see, you can earn but you don’t know how to spend.”
Working for oligarch
An emigre from Soviet Lithuania, Shuster debuted on Ukraine’s ICTV in 2005 at the invitation of steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, after his show was cancelled in Russia.
In the ensuing decade, Shuster worked on virtually all major television channels in Ukraine and, hence, with nearly all of the country’s oligarchs. Ukrainian media ownership is largely concentrated in the hands of a few super-rich individuals.
Despite that, he gained prominence for his editorial independence and pluralism.
Problems began when he fell out of the Poroshenko administration’s good graces. In 2016, Canadian-Italian citizen Shuster had his permit to work in Ukraine cancelled after tax authorities opened a probe into alleged tax evasion on his part. The prosecution was widely deemed to be politically motivated.
Shuster’s last resort was his cable channel 3S.tv, which went bankrupt in December 2016.
The ensuing two-and-half years turned into a sabbatical for Shuster. He wrote a book and traveled through India. Then, Ukraine’s richest man, Akhmetov, offered to relaunch Shuster’s talk show on his Ukraina TV channel. Shuster agreed. He had worked on the channel in 2008–2011, and he knew Akhmetov.
“I must say that, from my point of view, of all owners of TV channels (Akhmetov) is the most correct one. He doesn’t get into contact (with me),” he said.
Ratings are not the only thing the oligarch wants. His Ukraina is already the most popular TV channel in the country, but the most watched political talk show belongs to another channel: Right to Power airs on Thursdays on oligarch Kolomoisky’s 1+1.
Shuster signed a two-year contract with Ukraina TV on the condition of non-interference into his show’s editorial policy.
But risks, of course, remain
In his 2018 book “Freedom of Speech Against Fear and Humiliation,” Shuster writes: “Over 12 years of working in Ukraine, I faced the same situation almost every year: no matter which channel my show aired on, sooner or later a conflict would erupt with its owners. Even those owners who were liberal in the beginning soon tried to influence the content of the show: asked to remove undesirable guests and not raise hard-hitting issues.”
“I hope it will not happen. I am not his employee. Our production studio has a contract with his channel, and we provide content,” Shuster said.
Risk of ratings
There is another risk, too: low ratings. Shuster said that according to the contract, the channel can shut down the show if its ratings are below the average rating of the channel.
Previously, Shuster was known to attract a big audience and get the highest ratings of all political shows.
His first comeback show got a rating of 2.2 percent among the so-called “commercial audience” — meaning that 2.2 percent of Ukrainians aged 18 to 50 watched it. Shuster’s producer, Pavlo Elizarov, said that over 5 million of Ukrainians tuned in.
The channel’s average ranking is higher, standing at 2.8 percent.
The second metric for TV shows, the show’s share of all the people watching TV at the moment, also wasn’t favorable for Shuster. Only 9.2 percent of TV viewers chose his show on the premiere night, way below the channel’s average share of 15 percent that week.
It is also low by Shuster’s own standards. In a recent interview, the host boasted that when his talk show was getting a 10 percent share of viewers, it was “like a zero” for him.
Representing Ukraine
One of the specialties of Shuster’s show has always been its live survey of the audience gathered to represent the entire country. Shuster has not changed this format in the 18 years since it was first tested in Russia and transplanted to Ukraine.
During the program, 100 adult Ukrainians of all ages bused in from all over the country vote on small monitors attached to their seats when they support or disapprove of the statements made by the speakers.
Being back on television after a two-and-a-half-year break — the longest in his career — was strange, Shuster told the Kyiv Post backstage. He said he came back to Ukraine just 10 days before the premiere.
Shuster says the public sentiment has changed a lot since 2016.
“These new people who came with Zelensky have an incredible degree of public trust,” he said. “It was like this in 2014, but it was more divided because the EuroMaidan revolution was not a victory for everyone. Now the situation is different: these people are uniting the country.”
He is not far from the truth.
When Shuster asked the audience: “Full power in President Zelensky’s hands — is it an opportunity or a threat to democracy?”
Sixty-seven answered: an opportunity.
