The Soviet “Money World” is the product of a cooperative agreement among a SovietAmerican joint-venture company (Co Star), its New York filmmaking partner (Soventure Group) and the Soviet Central Television Network. Under the agreement, Co Star will receive the broadcast rights to 52 installments of the show and sell 90 seconds of advertising per episode to American companies that do business in the Soviet Union. For their part, “Money World” producers will receive technical support for a onehour special on perestroika and glasnost, as well as help in producing other segments for shows in the series. “It’s essentially a barter deal,” says Goodman, except instead of “selling Pepsi-Cola and taking outvodka. . . we’re bringing in TV and taking out TV.”
The television they’ll bring in will be a decided departure from most Soviet programming. It will include documentary segments shot on location in the United States and abroad, profiles, interviews and round-table discussions, complemented by “Money World’s” award-winning graphics. Soviet commentators will both translate and explain financial concepts. Among the topics likely to be selected are the environment and business growth, the global race for high technology and free-market experiments in Poland and Hungary. Also slated are segments with successful business figures such as one featuring Omaha investor Warren Buffett. The show will run during prime time (7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Soviet Union), opposite a menu of news programs, cartoons and sports events.
Tough audience How will Adam Smith go over with viewers brought up on Lenin and Marx? Soviets say it won’t be an easy audience. After all, “Our people don’t know what credit cards are,” says Valentine Yegorov, deputy director of the Television Ministry’s foreign division. The show’s title has already caused some problems in translation. (The producers have changed the name from “Adam Smith’s Money World” to “Adam Smith’s World of Finance” because the Russian phrase for “World of Money” can connote profiteering.) Then there’s the matter of the Soviet economy. These days the average citizen is more concerned with buying the bare necessities than with high finance. All that aside, “Money World’s” promoters are confident the show will tap into the newfound Soviet fascination with things Western. Think of the irony: the people of Moscow may not be able to buy sugar for their tea, but they’ll be able to learn how to play the commodities market.
