Something strange is happening on Pravda Street.
Down the block from the stodgy Communist newspaper, an irreverent gang of television mavericks has found a cheeky way of revealing the news -- and a lot more besides.
Consider their unorthodox coverage (or uncoverage) of the Sydney Olympics this week. The anchorwoman, a 25-year-old blonde named Svetlana Pesotskaya, solemnly recited the news of Russia's gold-medal results, while topless water-polo players and striptease gymnasts cavorted around her.
The late-night newscast is known as Golaya Pravda, or The Naked Truth.
Pravda's most famous subscriber, Vladimir Lenin, would be appalled, especially since the brazen show is broadcast from what was once the health and recreation building of the propaganda daily's printers.
But the site is now the headquarters of Moscow's fastest-growing television channel, M1, and The Naked Truth is its flagship show. The newscast has been nominated for a television award for humour. They say it is an elaborate metaphor for the "news pornography" of mainstream Russian newscasts, which are notorious for scandal-mongering and dirty-tricks campaigns.
"The idea of The Naked Truth was born during the last parliamentary elections, which were a real circus, a real striptease show," Ms. Pesotskaya explained. "Our program was just the right thing at the right time."
Usually it is Ms. Pesotskaya herself, a professionally trained actress, who becomes topless by the end of the newscast. Always maintaining an air of dignity, she earnestly reads the latest mundane Russian news bulletins from a Teleprompter while her clothes mysteriously fall off, item by item, until she is exposed in her full buxom glory.
Often she is assisted by props or assistants, depending on the theme of the day. Once she read the news while being slowly stripped by a Latin tango dancer. Another show created the mood of a Moscow kitchen with a leaking roof, a saucepan on the anchor desk to catch the dripping water, and a succession of young women stripping and hanging their blouses on a clothesline behind her.
The 10-minute newscast is followed by a topless weather forecast, featuring a rotating cast of amateur volunteers.
The show does not contain any "banal vulgarity," Ms. Pesotskaya insisted proudly this week as she taped the first edition of her second full season.
"Our show is popular because it's original. Almost every other Russian newscast was just copied from Western television. We were the first to introduce a non-standard approach to the news. In the other shows, the news readers are too serious."
As its popularity grows, The Naked Truth is becoming more ambitious. Now it dispatches its topless correspondents to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, where they politely interview Communists and Agrarians on the political issues of the day.
The Duma members, pleased to have anyone listening to them, are unperturbed by the semi-naked journalists. The Communists sternly repeat their antigovernment rhetoric, ignoring the nudity of the interviewers. Other politicians are so anxious to appear on the newscast that they eagerly volunteer to do their own striptease routine.
North American concepts of political correctness do not exist in Russia, and Ms. Pesotskaya is glad of it. "One member of parliament even joined my striptease and took off his jacket, tie and shirt," she recalled.
"In my opinion, the taboos in the West are absurd. They want people to be robots, not human beings. In our country, politicians are more popular after they appear on our show."
The channel's director, Sergei Moskvin, has his own theory about why his newscast has such a cult following among lawmakers. "The parliament is like an army barracks. Each guy wants to boast how cool he is. So everyone there likes The Naked Truth, and when one of them appeared on the show, everyone else wanted to appear too."
The Naked Truth, he adds, is neither an erotic show nor a newscast, nor straight satire. "It's like crossing a motorcycle with a crocodile. Of course we are joking, but if you can understand a joke at once, it's not a good joke. We're mocking everything, including erotic shows. I think our show is one of the funniest in the world."
Mr. Moskvin dreamed up the topless newscast last year to poke fun at a friend who was a famous news anchorman for a competing channel. "I was so tired of him, I decided to mock him. I invented it as a one-time show. But my phone rang off the hook; everyone was asking me for videotapes of the show. I decided to rerun it, so that everyone could make their own copies, but the ratings were very high. So we decided to make it a weekly show."
The owners of M1 have never been officially identified, but there are unconfirmed reports the channel was recently purchased by Lukoil, the giant Russian oil company. Clearly the channel has a lot of money: This summer it moved its 150 employees into the newly renovated five-storey building on Pravda Street.
M1 portrays itself as the channel of irony, satire and quirky unpredictability. In the process, it is tapping a rich vein of Russian humour.
"For almost 80 years, people in Russia have lived under constant stress," Mr. Moskvin said. "Humour was the only way out. It was the only way to support their optimism."
Geoffrey York