2×2 (TV channel)
Soviet and Russian television channel
2x2 (Russian: Дважды два, romanized: Dvazhdy dva, lit. 'Two Times Two') is a Russian television channel. Founded in 1989, it was the first commercial TV station in the Soviet Union. The channel was shut down from 1997 to 2003, at which point it was started up again. Since then, the channel has predominantly broadcast foreign animated TV series, including children's television series, anime, and adult animation shows (similar to the American channel Adult Swim).
2x2 began trial broadcasting in July 1989 on the Moscow Programme frequency, becoming the first commercial television channel in the USSR and Russia. Full broadcasting began on 1 November 1989. The network's programming was initially composed of advertising blocks, modern Soviet and Western music videos, cartoons, and TV series.
Starting on April 1, 2007, an animated Russian channel began broadcasting content aimed at a teen and adult audience under the name of 2x2.
Since 2014, the channel has been part of the holding company Gazprom-Media. As of April 2017, it employs 45 people.
The public source identifies “2×2 (TV channel)” as soviet and Russian television channel. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around channel, Soviet and Russian.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q222937. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1997, 2003 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “2×2 (TV channel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.