Saint Petersburg TV Channel held an unprecedented Hermitage Day telethon in December 2019. Special project dedicated to the 255th anniversary of one of the largest cultural institutions in the world was broadcast live.
8 hour-long discussion was held in the General Headquarters and related to the issue of presenting the Hermitage as the most important "news maker" and the "ambassador" of St. Petersburg and Russia in the world, as well as the center of attraction for tourists.
Materials prepared and filmed for the Hermitage Day gained more than a million views in total. It was noted that 350 thousand viewers were watching the program on TV, through social networks and website of the channel on December 7, 2019, the day the telethon was held.
Apart from being on air and in social networks of the TV channel, reports and stories from the telethon were posted in the publics of the State Hermitage Museum. Exceptional nature of the project was noted by Mikhail Piotrovsky, the Director of the Hermitage, who said after it was over that nothing like this had ever happened to any museum in the world.