1992–1994: Ostankino 4th Channel
On April 13, 1992, the management of the morning, afternoon and early evening weekday schedule was transferred to VGTRK. On June 1, the "Educational Program" changed its name to Russian Universities, but the programming policy, unlike the name of the channel, did not change at first - all the previous programs, including programs for children, foreign language lessons and other educational programs, Soviet feature and television films continued to be included in the schedule. Only some programs of a musical or entertainment nature and sports broadcasts that did not fit into the broadcast schedule of the main RTR channel became an addition. Management of the late evening weekday program and the program for weekends and holidays was left to RGTR "Ostankino", whose evening block of programs on weekdays began at 22:00, after the end of the Russian Universities programs. The evening block consisted mainly of showing one feature film, while anything other than films was shown in smaller quantities or might be absent altogether. The showing of some documentary television films and all cartoons, repeats of youth and popular science programs, and experimental programs were transferred from the weekday program to the weekend program, which was entirely under the control of RGTRK Ostankino. Broadcasting on weekends began at 9:00, with rare exceptions. Foreign language lessons were not included in the program schedule for these days. RGTRK Ostankino broadcast its entire airtime under the name Ostankino 4th Channel with a corresponding logo in the form of a stylized Arabic numeral "4" in a frame, in the lower right corner of the screen.
The holiday and weekend program began to include more entertainment programs, in the release of which the ATV television company ("Author's Television", "New Studio") was involved.[9] The president of ATV received the position of general director of Ostankino 4th Channel. The initiative for such changes belonged to the then chairman of the television and radio company, Yegor Yakovlev, who proposed to the ATV team to rehabilitate Ostankino 4th Channel, which was then a "television garbage dump of repeats and moldy educational programs".[10]
Since January 17, 1994, the evening broadcast on Ostankino 4th Channel was transferred from RGTRK Ostankino to NTV channel, and the morning and daytime broadcasts to VGTRK (Russian Universities TV channel). The channel's broadcasting was completely stopped. Some of the programs of the former Ostankino 4th Channel until August 29, 1997 ("Vremechko" and "Tretii glaz", previously also "Voskresenie s Dmitriyem Dibrovym") continued to be produced by ATV for the NTV channel, until they were replaced by similar programs of NTV's own production.[11]
