“Advertising works wonders, ordinary hard workers also lived in the USSR, who, for the most part, practically did not know how to play chess, but this did not prevent them from supporting Botvinnik, Tal, Spassky.
Even Yuri Detochkin’s mother supported Tal, and Korchnoi won the tournament. I doubt Detochkin’s mother understood the Sicilian Defence, the Najdorf Variation. It is necessary to return chess players to the orbit of television, in the media. Talk about chess players, raise the prestige of chess. The Soviet Union can’t be brought back, but nonetheless, it’s still worth going back to a more total approach to sports coverage.
Take Match TV, a wonderful channel. Now Russian athletes are not allowed anywhere – neither in football, nor in biathlon, etc. It seems that the grid has been completely downloaded, there are still 24 hours in a day, not a minute shows chess, not a second. Ian Nepomniachtchi won the Candidates Tournament, I understand that it is impossible to show his seven-hour broadcasts live, this is another argument in favor of speeding up. But small reviewers, comments, take a specialist, you can even do it with me. You can show it in a human way, normally, I will explain everything on my fingers, which will be clear even to completely novice people, but show it! If television, which is still the most powerful medium for coverage, were to show chess regularly, I assure you that in betting shops and kitchens, people everywhere would be talking about chess too.
This is easy to do. What is the problem? I dont know. You have to communicate with TV kingpins, with money tycoons, who prefer to show absolutely any nonsense, when there is nothing to talk about, nothing to show, but not chess. I don’t want to just throw the blanket on myself, we are “well done” chess players, and all other sports are “cucumbers”, but excuse me, there shouldn’t be only football on TV. All other sports, which also deserve great respect, must have TV time, show interest in them, people are also inclined. By the way, the chess players are more or less firmly on their feet. I find out how representatives of other sports bounce, just some kind of horror. And the footballers, the good footballers, don’t know what to do with the money: he sits on the bench, goes out on the field for two minutes, as a substitute for formality and gets into more than representatives of another sport all together. It is because of such disproportions that such a disorder is created that is happening in the world of sports, ”Shipov said in an interview with Sovetsky Sport correspondent Daria Savinova.
