muz-tv.r52.ru was a promotional page for an advertising contest that in 2001 was run jointly by the national music channel "MUZ-TV," the Nizhny Novgorod project www.r52.ru, and the "Baltika" brewing company[1]. The site ran as a subdomain of the Nizhny Novgorod portal r52.ru, and the portal itself was named on the page as an organizer of the promotion alongside the TV channel and the brewery[1]. It was not an independent publication: its entire content came down to the terms of a single promotion, and later to its results[2].

The "have a beautiful rest" contest

The homepage headline was built as a formula: "MUZ-TV + R52 + BEER = have a beautiful rest"[1]. The rules fit into three steps: watch the "MUZ-TV" broadcast, remember the video and performer that aired at the appointed hour, and fill out a form on the site with the answer[1]. In the snapshot from July 17, 2001, the appointed time given was Friday, July 13, 4:20 PM[1]; a later snapshot preserved traces of other rounds — Thursday, August 23, and Friday, August 17, 1:20 PM or 4:20 PM[2].

The prize list was spelled out in detail: the first person to answer correctly and fill out the form got a case of "Baltika" beer, the next ten participants got beer sets, and everyone else who filled out the form got promotional caps and T-shirts from the brewing company[1]. The tone was inviting: "Want to get a case of beer? Nothing could be simpler!" — that is how the homepage began[1]. There is no account of the TV channel, no description of the portal or the brewery in the surviving text — only the terms, the prizes, and the entry form, and in the later snapshot a link to the list of winners is added[2].

Results: the winners' page

By the snapshot from November 28, 2001, the site drew a line under the promotion: it described the contest as having taken place, and the main spot was taken up by a "Contest Winners" section[2]. It named five people and gave their short comments: one learned about the contest by chance from the R52.ru portal and made it in time for the appointed hour, another had entered contests before but won for the first time, a third called the contest an event that lifts your mood, the female winner wrote that she won a case of beer and had never won anything before, and one more participant wrote that he had been rewarded with the grand prize[2].

Below the comments on the same page, the old blocks with the contest terms remained; part of the markup had been disabled with comments and ended up in the snapshot's text in fragments — down to the run-together line "xWant to get a case of beer?"[2]. The page was edited from round to round on top of the old version, without being redone from scratch.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the site entered not as a project with its own audience, but as an advertising satellite of the r52.ru portal: a separate subdomain, set up for a single promotion and stopping being updated along with it[2]. In our materials it is recorded via the nn.ru directory, where its description almost word for word repeated the homepage's wording.

The site gained no weight in local rankings: in our sample it has neither a rating nor votes on the Counter.nn.ru counter — zero and zero — and it is noted only via the directory. On how this census was structured and what exactly it measured, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The web archive's index for the domain contains five records, and the homepage text survives for two of them; the later one is dated November 28, 2001[2]. There are no later states of the page in our sample: it appears that after the list of winners was published, the site was not changed again. The domain muz-tv.r52.ru no longer exists today — by our check it does not respond.

What remains of the site is exactly what it was made for: the terms of the promotion, the list of prizes, and five comments from the 2001 winners — a short cross-section of how a Nizhny Novgorod portal, a national music channel, and a brewing company shared one promotional page.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)