From W.NYC and New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week in Russia, a group of journalists took control of a TV station.

But not by force. The owner, an exiled businessman, happily handed over the reins of TV6 to Yvgeny Kislyov,

a star news anchor who just quit his post at the country's most prominent network, NTV.

Now, NTV was once hailed as Russia's most independent station, alternately easy and tough on President Boris Yeltsin,

Vladimir Putin replaced Yeltsin, and

NTV was taken over by the state-controlled gas company, Gazprom. That's why the journalists,

led by Kislyov, fled NTV and took up residence at TV6. But what of NTV? Its former owner, Vladimir

Kaczynski, has been drummed out of Russia.

Its new boss is an American businessman with Russian heritage, Boris Jordan.

Jordan vowed to keep the station independent, and he's had roughly four months to prove it.

Matthew Brzynski, longtime observer of Russia, and author of the book, Casino Moscow, joins us now.

Matthew, welcome to O.D.M.

Hi.

If the Russian economy is correctly described as Casino Moscow, then I guess Boris Jordan is Bugsy Siegel.

He billed it, right?

He certainly was the poster child for the boom in the mid to late 90s.

He was Russia's greatest cheerleader.

And I think you're right, more than any other westerner,

he was responsible for many of the billions of dollars

that then got sunk into this great Ponzi scheme or pyramid,

which naturally went bust.

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