Word: ott
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...evening news, an occasional "world of nature" documentary or the mildly spicy cabaret programs and quiz shows. Nor was late-night TV suitable for a working class that had to rise early to go out and build the permanent revolution. In the words of Estonian journalist Urmas Ott, state-controlled Central Television was like "preserved food: perfectly round and sealed, so that nothing spoiled, nothing changed, and nothing was very interesting...
...broadcasts the provocative cultural digest Fifth Wheel, focusing on "superfluous people" in the arts and letters, as well as the offbeat 600 Seconds news show, in which commentator Alexander Nevzorov races against a flashing digital clock to summarize the day's events, from cultural calendar to police blotter. Journalist Ott from Estonian TV has been so successful with one-on-one celebrity interviews that his regional program Television Acquaintance has been imported to national television...
...formula is simple: a celebrity, an interviewer and a video camera. That is all Estonian journalist Urmas Ott, 33, requires for his monthly 90-minute interview show, Television Acquaintance, which ranks fourth on the nation's popularity index. Never mind that the back of his head is more familiar to audiences than his face or that he speaks Russian with a syncopated Estonian accent. Soviet viewers feel that they are eavesdropping on an intimate chat with such personalities as chess champion Anatoly Karpov, figure skater Irina Rodnina, painter Ilya Glazunov and pop singer Alla Pugacheva...
...Ott jokes that his appeal for Russian viewers can be explained by the fact that "I'm not one of them and I'm not foreign." He belongs, instead, to the Estonian school of TV and radio reporters, sharpened by competition with Western broadcasting from nearby Finland. Ott believes the art of interviewing was lost during the Brezhnev years, when prepared answers to prepared questions became the norm. With Television Acquaintance he has set about reviving the genre and giving it a personal spin. As he bluntly puts it, "An interview is not a speech...
...Ott...