VID (Russian: ВИД), stylized as ВИD, lit. "View"; acronym of Vzglyad i Drugiye, "Outlook and Others", formerly VIDgital (Russian: ВИDgital) from 2017 to 2020, is a Russian and former Soviet TV production company. VID produces shows for Channel One Russia, NTV and OTR. It is best known for producing the television programmes Wait for Me (Russian: Жди меня), designed to help people find loved ones and Pole Chudes (Поле Чудес) which is a popular Russian version of Wheel of Fortune.^[1]

VID's TV shows are also aired by Inter, ONT, Evraziya and Prime TV channels.

Vladislav Listyev became the CEO of VID in 1993.^[2]

After his death on 1 March 1995, it was Alexander Lyubimov who managed the company from March 1995 to April 1998.

In April 1998, he suggested Larisa Sinelshchikova, vice-president of the TV-6 Russian commercial TV channel, to become the new CEO of VID.^[5]

The Russian financial crisis created a need for new management ideas, and Larisa Sinelshchikova in cooperation with Alexander Lyubimov took an unexpectedly bold decision to expand VID's own television production, an initiative supported by Igor Shabdurasulov and Alexander Akopov, CEOs of ORT and Rossiya television channels respectively.

This measure enables VID to become a major content producer for ORT and, as a result, the leader of Russia's television market in terms of both its standing and finances.

A change in the company's shareholders took place in 1999, with Larisa Sinelshchikova and Sergey Kushnerev becoming VID's new shareholders. The participants did not disclose any information about the sum of the deal, which resulted in all of the previous shareholders giving up their shares, with the exception of Alexander Lyubimov.

In early 2007, VID's main shareholders Alexander Lyubimov and Larisa Sinelshchikova had a major disagreement over the company's further development strategy.

Sinelshchikova promoted her long-lived idea of the umbrella brand, whose implementation would help diversify the management of the company through redistribution of human and financial resources and result in the shareholders’ increased profits.

Lyubimov's rejection of this idea led to Sinelshchikova's withdrawal from VID and her subsequent successful implementation of the umbrella brand concept in her new full-cycle television company, Krasny Kvadrat (Russian: Красный квадрат, translated: Red Square).

VID is based in the Ostankino Technical Center at 12, Akademika Koroleva Street, Moscow.

This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2019)

The original VID logo was created by Andrey Rasbash.

We wanted the logo to be "alive", back then, everyone was fond of computer graphics and we wanted a living artifact. We thought towards MGM, where the lion roared, but we didn't want animals, we wanted a symbol. And the East is full in every sort of symbols [...]

— Alexander Lyubimov

For this purpose, Rasbash went to the State Museum of Oriental Art of Moscow for advice from Listyev's future wife, Albina Nazimova, who then worked as a restorer at the museum.^[6] Among all the options she proposed, Rasbash chose the ceramic mask of the Chinese Taoist philosopher Guo Xiang with a three-pawed toad on his head, based on a ceramic head sculpture found at the Museum of Eastern Art in Moscow.^[5] The logo's face was originally a direct copy of the mask's, but apparently, the museum attempted to sue VID, leading them to digitally alter the mask in order to avoid legal difficulties. In different cultures, the three-legged toad is interpreted in different ways, such as representing spiritual wealth, power and financial wealth.^[7]

The only problem was that the mask had huge ears, like Cheburashka. We sat there, we looked at it and thought, "Well, this is some kind of mess, some terrible Cheburaska", but we cropped off the ears on the computer and everything went well.

— Alexander Lyubimov

The wordmark of the company uses the letter D of the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic Д, so the logo appears as ВИD as opposed to ВИД.^[8]

The regular music was a loud, dramatic orchestra-led fanfare that goes off quite bombastic, and is preceded with what sounds like a jackhammer and a soft "swoosh" sound.^[8]

The original VID opening logo is known being austere and "frightening" in its audio and visuals.^[9] When the opening logo was introduced there were many complaints from parents with young children, who found it scary to watch, especially when it preceded or followed children's television.^[9] More recently, this version of the opening logo has attracted a large amount of interest from the Internet due to its "eerie" nature, making it a subject of Meme culture.^[9]