VIDgital

Vladislav Listyev, one of the VID co-founders

The VID Television Company was founded in 1987 by Vladislav Listyev, Andrey Rasbash, Alexander Lyubimov, Alexander Politkovsky, Ivan Demidov and Alexander Gorozhankin, based on Vzglyad, a Russian creative association affiliated with the Youth Editorial Board of the Central Television of the USSR.[2]

In the 1990, VID opened new subdivisions in Saint Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, which aired their own TV programs.

In Autumn 1991, the Soviet Ministry of Press registered Vzglyad as the official newspaper of the VID Television Company. The newspaper was later renamed Novy Vzglyad, lit. ‘New Outlook’, in May 1992.

VID Predstavlyaet (Russian: ВИD представляет, translated: VID Presents), a TV programme hosted by television speaker Igor Kirillov, was aired on Friday evenings on Channel One Russia (1991–1994) and on Wednesdays on Ostankino's Channel Four (February–March 1992).

Between 1991 and 1995 VID was in partnership with Experiment, a creative association at Ostankino, the Russian State Television and Radio Company.

Between 1992 and 1994 VID sponsored Ostankino's editorial office for children and co-produced children's programs, Good Night, Little Ones! (Russian: Спокойной ночи, малыши!) and The Call of the Jungle.

In 1992 VID became a shareholder of several companies, such as Muzoboz, Disk-kanal, Pole Chudes, Vzglyad, and InterVID, holding at least 60% of shares in each of them.

From 1993 to 1995 VID, along with ATV and REN TV, was part of the Association of Independent Television Producers, which co-founded the ORT TV channel in 1995.

VID has been a co-founder of TEFI (Russian: ТЭФИ), Russian National TV award by the Russian Academy of Television, since 1994.

From September to November 1998, the RTR TV channel aired Dobroye utro, Rossiya! (Russian: Доброе утро, Россия!, lit. 'Good morning, Russia!'), a morning TV program produced by VID in cooperation with Igor Shestakov's creative workshop.

Later, from 2001 to 2002, VID co-sponsored a group of its subsidiaries.

As part of the reorganization of VID, the following programs suspended their participation in it: VID-Design, later renamed Pervoye Polye (Russian: Первое поле), Obshchestvo Otkrytykh Okon (Russian: Общество открытых окон), Putyovye Sovety (Russian: Путёвые советы), Krylya-Media (Russian: Крылья-Медиа), and others.

In 2000, VID, which had considerably increased the amount of produced content by that time, decided to compete for the Channel 3 broadcasting rights in a contest held by the Russian Ministry of Press and Mass Media.

On 19 April 2000, Larisa Sinelshchikova, CEO of VID, explained this decision as follows: "Any producer dreams of moving to his own home one day. The life of the independent producer on any channel is more like living in a dormitory, so he always longs to move to his own home, all the more so if he ‘produced’ enough relatives to fill up the whole dormitory". At the same time, she believes that "the Government of Moscow wants, so it seems, to have a strong and worthy channel. We are pursuing the same goal".[3]

The broadcasting concept of the channel and the feasibility study were based on the assumption that the new channel's annual budget would be approximately $30,000,000.

On 17 November 2001 VID aired the first season of Posledniy geroy (Russian: Последний герой, translated: Last Hero), the Russian version of the American Survivor reality show, based on the idea that spectators can not only observe the ups and downs of competitions, but also spy on the life of people they don't know.

VID changed its name to VIDgital (VID + digital)[4] on 6 October 2017, explained by Alexander Lyubimov as follows: "We start to seriously consider moving onto the Internet. There you can experiment and try out new turns, new intonations and new ideas".

In September 2017, it was reported that the Zhdi Menya TV show would no longer be broadcast on Channel One Russia. According to federal media resources, Channel One Russia and VIDgital failed to sign the contract for the production of the above-mentioned programme owing to the "new team's personnel policy" and, consequently, the parties’ failure to agree on the candidacy of the new host.

The VIDgital-produced Zhdi Menya began airing on NTV on 27 October 2017.