Timur Kizyakov about the “orphan” scandal: “No one will do anything like this for such funds. Who is “cleaning up” Channel One from “While everyone is at home”? Timur Kizyakov: Channel One’s methods are unacceptable to us

The program “While Everyone is Home” will no longer air on Channel One. Timur Kizyakov, along with the film crew, resigned from the TV channel.

Channel One will no longer air the show “While Everyone is Home” with host Timur Kizyakov.

Channel One terminated the contract with the company that was producing the program. Since the program does not belong to “Pervy” and was created by the production company, it will no longer be broadcast on it.

TV presenter Timur Kizyakov explained the reasons for leaving Channel One: together with the “While Everyone is Home” project, he quit of his own free will back in May, after the scandal with the video passports of orphans.

Kizyakov insists that the producer of the program, Dom LLC, in early June, on its own initiative, sent Channel One an official notice that it would no longer create a program for them: “We did this because of the unacceptable working methods of the channel’s management.” Kizyakov refused to disclose the essence of his claims. “We know nothing about the fact that the channel allegedly decided not to work with us anymore in April,” he told reporters.

However, according to Kizyakov, the severance of relations with “First” for the “Dom” company is not directly related to the scandal around video passports: “Although we were extremely unpleasant that the channel did not protect us in this situation.”

Earlier, the media reported that the decision to terminate the contract with the Dom company, which produced the While Everyone Is Home program, was made about a month ago. Allegedly, this happened as a result of an internal audit, which was organized by the TV channel after the publication in the media of information that presenters Timur and Elena Kizyakov received money from several sources at once for the production of so-called “video passports” of orphans (they were shown in the section “You have there will be a child"). They talked about children from orphanages who needed adoptive parents.

It turned out that the company received money for this section from the TV channel (for outsourcing the production of the program), from the state (for the production of “video passports”) and from sponsors (for example, from one of the well-known manufacturers of ceramic tiles).

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, 49.5 percent of Dom LLC belongs to Kizyakov and his long-time business partner Alexander Mitroshenkov, and another 1% belongs to the head of the company Nina Podkolzina.

It was reported at the end of last year that companies that belong to the creators of the “While Everyone is Home” program received funding from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and at the same time from regional authorities in the amount of about 110 million rubles to create videos about orphans "Vedomosti".

According to procurement documents studied by the newspaper, the production of one such “video passport” costs 100 thousand rubles.

Channel One representative Larisa Krymova then noted that they were not aware that the company producing the program was filming “video passports” with money received from the state.

According to the publication, Channel One paid approximately one and a half million rubles for one episode of the program “While Everyone is Home.” The “You’re Having a Baby” section also had a separate sponsor - the same tile manufacturer, and the creators of the program also received part of this money.

The “While Everyone is Home” program is being closed due to disagreements over allegedly inflated funding for videos about orphans

Timur Kizyakov. Photo: Alexandra Mudrats/TASS

Another departure from the First: Timur Kizyakov is leaving the channel. The program “While everyone is at home” will no longer be broadcast. The formal reason for closing the program, which turned a quarter century old this year, was a scandal over the financing of the filming of videos about orphans. It turned out that the money was allocated from three sources at once: the channel, the state and sponsors. Kizyakov stated that he resigned himself.

The decision to close the program, according to RBC, was made not on August 15, but a month before. Allegedly, Channel One has long been dissatisfied with the quality of “While Everyone is Home,” although we still need to look for such long-lived people on television: the program has been airing since 1992 and has changed little over the past quarter century; attempts to somehow update it have failed, and the only innovation is more than ten years old .

In 2006, the program featured the section “You’re Having a Child.” They say that it was the situation around her that was the last straw. On television, such issues are usually resolved quietly, without washing dirty linen in public. This was the case with Malakhov, and the intrigue continues to this day. Oleshko’s departure went almost unnoticed. In the case of Kizyakov, it is literally about money.

At the end of last year, the company that produced the program received 110 million rubles from the Ministry of Education and Science to produce videos, so-called video passports, about orphans. The channel also paid for this, and sponsors also helped. According to Vedomosti, one column costs 100 thousand rubles. Kizyakov could do this for less money, says Mitya Aleshkovsky, head of the charity foundation “We Need Help.”

Mitya AleshkovskyHead of the charity foundation “Need Help”“He was accused of producing these videos on a commercial basis. They said that since you are doing a good deed, you should not engage in commercial activities. This, in my opinion, is wrong, because everything in this world has a commercial value, even the production of a video, and the people who produced these videos, of course, should receive decent payment according to market conditions. There is nothing wrong with a charitable foundation paying for any commercial task. The question is whether they paid a reasonable price or not. If this price is not justified, then it is not justified in the case of a commercial organization.”

At the same time, the prices for operator work in Moscow are known - 20 thousand rubles. What if you go to the regions, pay for tickets and accommodation for the film crew, and what if there are more children than the original budget expected?

Komsomolskaya Pravda and Vedomosti were the first to draw attention to the scandal, catching on to the status of the defendants and the amount. At the end of last year, at a meeting of the Ministry of Education and Science, it turned out that “While Everyone is Home” was making videos about orphans with public money. This in itself is not a problem, but the difficulty is that the word “video questionnaire” turned out to be a registered trademark, and Kizyakov allegedly even sued other philanthropists on this issue.

And, of course, it turned out that the production of “While Everyone is Home” received double, if not triple, payment, which became the reason for the investigation within Channel One. The situation became clearer just before the start of the new season. Timur Kizyakov himself commented on her Business FM:

Timur Kizyakov TV presenter “I give a simple example. Do you know how much it costs to dig a grave? 40 thousand! Through Sberbank, official payment. 40 thousand. Two diggers will work with shovels for an hour, and then save a child’s life, and not with funds that were begged from people, but with government funding or large companies. This suddenly became a crime, and we have to justify ourselves, explain something. If the video passport disappears, this will never happen again, because no one will do anything like that for such money. If this were a profitable business, wouldn’t other TV channels, having both staff and equipment, do something similar at home? They would have lowered the price—not 100 thousand, but 95 thousand—and won these competitions. Why don't they do it? The cost is higher. We are working on this matter, and 2.5 thousand children placed out of 3 thousand filmed is the result. If we had withdrawn 30 thousand, we would have arranged 28 thousand.”

“While Everyone is Home” is criticized, among other things, for the fact that it only films cute, healthy children, while the Kizyakov family built a house. Now the former presenter of Channel One assures that the building was erected a year before the start of the project about orphans and that there is no point in making excuses - the sponsors transferred the money not to the program’s accounts, but to the guardianship authorities.

There was no official reaction from Channel One, but it is obvious that the breakup turned out to be scandalous. Timur Kizyakov directly says that he wrote his resignation at the end of May, because the channel’s management “had become difficult to work with.” However, on the First, even after the departure of Malakhov and Kizyakov, there were enough legendary projects and star presenters.

By the way, one of the first versions of Malakhov’s departure from Channel One is related to the fact that “Let Them Talk” is becoming a more politicized program, which the presenter allegedly did not agree with. This assumption of the BBC, in fact, was confirmed: the first full-fledged episode of the program with a new presenter was dedicated to Mikheil Saakashvili.