NTV

Background
NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ) was founded on July 14th, 1993 as a TV production company by journalists Oleg Dobrodeev, Evgeny Kiselyov and Igor Malashenko of the Itogi program of Channel 1 Ostankino with the financial support of the head of "Most-Bank" Vladimir Gusinsky. Officially, the birthday of NTV is considered to be October 10th, 1993, when Itogi first aired on Channel 5. On January 17th, 1994, NTV received an evening broadcast on Channel 4 Ostankino (which ceased broadcasting in the same day), and after the 1996 presidential election, all airtime on this frequency. NTV was owned by Media Most at first, it was forcibly taken over by Gazprom Media in April 2001, resulting in part of the team breaking away, and became the pro-Kremlin TV channel.

ID (January 17, 1994?)
Visuals: It's currently unknown what the beginning of the ident is, but a low-quality partial recording shows a black background with three fireworks bursts, where the outlined letters "Serif" with "Serif" on the near-top, tilted upwards to the 90 degrees, with the text "ПРЕМЬЕРА КАНАЛА!" ("CHANNEL PREMIERE!") (in Betina font) with the color cycling above the "Serif", moves from the bottom to the center and faces the viewer while the globe with only green landmasses zooms in between the letters "Serif" and "Serif" and "ПРЕМЬЕРА КАНАЛА!" fades out, forming the corporate logo.

Technique: CGI.

Audio: A triumphant patriotic fanfare with the sound of fireworks.

Availability: It could be seen while the channel began broadcasting for the first time.