TNT

In 2000–2001, the channel and Media-Most holdings (NTV, NTV Plus, and the publisher Seven Days) was on the brink of liquidation. During the spring of 2001, while NTV ownership was changing, TNT broadcast NTV programs. After the seizure and redistribution of NTV, most of its journalists moved to TNT until Boris Berezovsky proposed Yevgeny Kiselyov to head TV-6. After some of its journalists moved to TV-6, TNT changed directors; Pavel Korchagin went to TV-6, and Andrey Skutin became general director. In November 2001, TNT became part of Gazprom-Media.

2002–2005

TNT targeted a wide range of viewers before the 2002–03 season, broadcasting documentaries, cartoons, and series. There was a proposal to make TNT a sports channel. During the fall of 2002 a sports program, created with NTV Plus Sport, was added to TNT's schedule.

The channel, unable to purchase (or produce) blockbusters, focused on new and less-expensive programming. This approach was successful, and TNT's audience increased from 2.7 to 5.4 percent by the end of 2002. The ratings increase was primarily due to the addition of Okna, a tabloid talk show hosted by Dmitry Nagiyev, and several other programs launched by a new team of managers led by former STS CEO Roman Petrenko. TNT aired Today’s Day, its last old-regime show (whose ratings had fallen precipitously) for the last time on November 15, 2002.

At the end of 2002 the channel adopted a new slogan ("TNT helps you!"), describing itself as "a unique TV channel that not only entertains, but helps you". On February 1, 2003, TNT overhauled its schedule. One of the first programs produced with the new concept was Moscow: Instructions for Proper Use, which replaced Today’s Day. TNT prioritized reality shows and a variety of alternative-entertainment programs. The closed joint-stock company TNT-Teleset became an open one. With the direct participation of Roman Petrenko and Dmitry Troitsky, a number of low-rated programs were replaced with original productions: The Forbidden Zone, The Famine, Reparation School, The Taxi, The Child Robot, Big Brother, Dom, and Dom-2. The latter jump-started the careers of hosts Ksenia Sobchak, Kseniya Borodina and Olga Buzova:

For the first time I saw [Ksenia Sobchak] in 2004 on a video cassette when doing a casting of the future hosts of Home-2... I must admit that as a host she was completely inexperienced. But my first impression, which only strengthened in the following years, was: "Boy, she's smart!" Sobchak's daughter, a secular party girl – choosing her as a host seemed to us to be quite a peculiar decision, as we were going to promote as a new host somebody that many have heard about, but which no one had ever seen.

On September 1, 2003, the animated block Nickelodeon on TNT began airing during the day. That month TNT premiered Sasha + Masha, a comedy series which became one of the channel's highest-rated shows. Five seasons were produced until September 2005, when it was rerun. TNT's Comedy Club, featuring stand-up comedy, was inspired by members KVN's New Armenians team:

When I first came to their party, I immediately realized - this is what we needed for the TNT. I saw how their audience reacts to their humor. After the show (which was on Saturday) I approached them and said, on Monday we will sign a contract.

Comedy Club showcases TNT's stable of resident TV comedians, popularizing a "new kind of humor".

2006–2007

The 2006–07 season began not in September but in July, hoping to attract an over-30 audience watching TV at their summer cottages. To expand its reality-show reputation, TNT executives introduced a number of new programs: The Candidate (with Vladimir Potanin), Nanny To the Rescue, Former Wives Club, Wife Exchange, and A Different Life. According to former director-general Roman Petrenko, TNT "had studied almost the entire experience of the TV companies of all around the world and picked up the ideas seeming to have a greater potential, as well as hiring British producers":

We invite foreign specialists. In addition, we have managed to acquire licenses for all of the most famous world TV formats. So, if some channels want to stop broadcasting series - realizing that they do not have any perspective - they cannot get licenses for reality shows. All the packages already belong to us.

Channel executives began publicly expressing dissatisfaction with Dom-2 (despite its record ratings), and wanted to put it on hiatus for a season or two. None of the new programs was able to match its popularity, however, and Dom-2 remains on the air as Russia's longest-lasting reality TV show.

Happy Together, an adaptation of the American sitcom Married... with Children, premiered in March 2006. Running for seven years, it was one of TNT's most successful sitcoms.

Nasha Russia, a sketch comedy series based on Little Britain and starring Mikhail Galustyan and Sergei Svetlakov, premiered on November 4, 2006. It was popular, and some of its characters (such as the foreign workers Ravshan and Dzhamshut) became national symbols. After running for five seasons, in 2016 (five years after the end of the original series) it was followed by a spin-off: The Bearded Guy. Understand and Forgive, developing one of Nasha Russia's storylines and starring Mikhail Galustyan as unlucky Ryazan guard Sashka Borodach. Galustyan's character became symbolic of a negligent worker.

Also in November 2006, TNT's on-air style was updated. The channel began promoting the people directly (or indirectly) connected with it: hosts, actors in series, participants in Dom-2 and Comedy Club comedians. Clips and advertisements with the slogans "TNT about life. TNT about love. TNT for fun" were shown in a month-long campaign throughout Russia.

The fall advertising campaign was followed by a larger one in spring 2007, featuring the slogan "Feel our love". According to its creator, Alexander Dulerain, "In the entire new advertising history, we wanted to overturn all the concepts familiar to the viewer, to shock him." In a series of short commercials promoting TNT stars (Ksenia Sobchak, Olga Buzova, Alyona Vodonaeva, Garik Kharlamov, Timur Rodriguez, Pavel Volya and Mikhail Galustyan) the multiple meanings of some phrases were played with, balancing between romance and humor.

Competitions between comedians and stand-up teams, a new TV format, began in 2007. Laughter Without Rules, from the producers of Comedy Club, premiered in April. Young comedians competed for large cash prizes, with the winner moving on to A Crazy League. Laughter Without Rules lasted until the December 2009 death of host Vladimir Turchinsky. In August 2010, the show was revived as Comedy Battle and dedicated to Turchinsky. It continued until the end of 2016, and was replaced the following year by Open Mic.

In 2007, TNT received the Best TV Channel of the Year award at the Russian Entertainment Awards.

2008–2009

At the beginning of 2008, TNT's most successful reality shows were Dom-2 and Bitva extrasensov, based on Britain's Psychic Challenge. The channel produced its first parody comedy (The Best Movie, from the producers of Comedy Club and starring Garik Kharlamov, Mikhail Galustyan and Pavel Volya) on January 24. The theatrical film co-starred Armen Dzhigarkhanyan and Valery Barinov.

According to its producers, The Best Movie was a "response" to Scary Movie. Their intention was "not just get back the cost of the movie and make more money with its sequel, but to create a successful parody comedy, a new genre unknown to Russian audiences". The producers lacked "raw material", because the Russian film industry does not produce blockbusters comparable to Hollywood's. The film parodies the Russian movies Night Watch, The 9th Company, Shadowboxing and Bimmer, the foreign films Star Wars, The Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean and Bruce Almighty and the Russian television series Brigada and The Truckers.

With a budget of $5 million (and an equal amount spent on advertising), The Best Movie earned over $30 million at the box office and set the first-weekend record for Russia and the CIS countries ($19.2 million). Second-weekend earnings dropped 72 percent, however, due to poor reviews and negative word of mouth. The Best Movie 2 was released a year later, followed by The Best Movie 3-De in January 2011; both starred Kharlamov. Produced by Monumental Pictures, their runs followed the first film's: a good start, a collapse during the second week and some profit at the end.

TNT targeted young audiences in 2008. Univer, a sitcom about students living in a Moscow dormitory, premiered on August 25. The series, created and produced by Semyon Slepakov and Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov, was directed by Pyotr Tochilin (director of Khottabych):

Semyon and I have long planned a comedy about the hostel, since the time they had lived there. All students know that without jokes and ridiculous situations, studying and living in a hostel is impossible. So we decided to show everything without embellishment.

Love in a District, a series about young people belonging to different social groups, premiered on December 19 and ran for two seasons. Univer was more successful and, with its two-season sequel Univer. New Dorm, has produced over 500 episodes. SashaTanya, another Univer spin-off about a couple from the original series, premiered in 2013 and was also successful.

Made in Woman (soon renamed Comedy Woman), inspired by the all-male Comedy Club, premiered at the end of 2008 and was conceived in 2006 by KVN Moscow Megapolis team member Natalia Yeprikyan. Other women from KVN who were involved in the show were Elena Borshcheva, Ekaterina Skulkina, Ekaterina Barnabas, Ekaterina Baranova, Marina Kravets, Maria Kravchenko, Polina Sibagatullina, Tatyana Morozova, Natalia Medvedeva, and Marina Bochkareva. Egor Druzhinin was an occasional host.

Made in Woman is not the same as Comedy Club, and not "a female Comedy Club. It has nothing to do with stand-up but is a completely different genre: pop comedy. It's bright, loud and funny. Remember in the past, when terms as "a variety artist", "a pop star" and "theatre of variety miniatures" existed? A variety of performance does not just mean a person with a microphone, delivering a monologue or a set of jokes. It's also dances, songs, disguises, and tricks! In Made in Woman, there are jokes that you need to think about and pure clowning.

Barvikha, a comedy-drama about school life in an elite cottage community, premiered in fall 2009. Its creators described it as a "new-generation series" and "cinematic" (the series was filmed in 1080p), with carefully written dialogue – the writers visited Barvikha – and good performances. The series raised questions about the interaction of children with others from families with a different social status. Two seasons were filmed (one 20 episodes and the other 15), and the second season was broadcast in 2011 as Bright Young Things: Barvikha 2.

TNT participated in 2009's Year of the Young, supporting the youth-volunteer Train of Youth and broadcasting over 500 public service announcements. The channel supported 12 information campaigns about healthy lifestyles, the HIV prevention, combating tobacco and other addiction, supporting blood donation and inclusive education, and counteracting human trafficking. A year earlier, TNT was an information sponsor of the Year of the Family and produced election videos with the slogan "Don't be a vegetable - vote!" In November 2009, TNT received an award from the Coalition of Nonprofit Organizations for "Socially Responsible Media: Putting Social Advertising on the Air".

2010–2011

Alexander Dulerain became TNT's general producer of the TNT in 2010, replacing Dmitri Troitsky (who left the channel). The channel premiered two sitcoms: "The Interns" in March and The Swell Guys in November.

Interns writer Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov graduated from the South Ural State Medical University. His experiences inspired the series:

When I was in ninth grade, my grandmother underwent surgery. After the operation, a doctor with heavy boots and a pack of Marlboros in his hand went out and asked: "Dusmuhametov?" – then lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke. "Your grandma will live." He was, literally, playing God. It seemed to me that being a doctor was a brutal and hot-shot kind of profession.

Like Univer, The Interns did not copy American sitcoms. In the magazine The Art of Cinema, Olga Ganzhara agrees with star Ivan Okhlobystin that The Interns is more than a traditional situational comedy; it "has discovered a new genre – having something in common with a classic kind of TV series and a sitcom based on an incredible playwriting material". The Interns was filmed like a "full-length movie", with rehearsals, multiple takes, a Red One camera, and no laugh track. According to Dusmukhametov, The Interns expanded the TNT demographic from 18–30 to 14–44.

Okhlobystin's character, department head Andrei Evgenievich Bykov, inspires a "Bykov's army" and creates a "paradoxical and ironic rationalism with which he tends to percept the reality" reminiscent of Hugh Laurie's portrayal of Gregory House. Okhlobystin's character, however, is purely Russian: full of love and respect for human suffering. Dr. Bykov regularly mocks a foreign colleague; learning in an early episode that the intern Levin (like House) is going to treat rare, complex illnesses, he asks who is going to treat ordinary patients – the ones filling up the hospitals:

Indeed - the patient and the way he is being treated in "The Interns" are of little, or better say, almost zero importance. They just make the background for developing and organizing the action, the most convenient way to bring forward all sorts of adventures, a source of adrenaline, a real school of life, a place for the youngsters to get mature. The disease is an informational cause that initiates communication...

The last episode of The Interns aired in February 2016; that June, the series received a TEFI award for best TV sitcom series.

Swell Guys, a reality series, premiered on November 8, 2010, and finished second in the ratings (after The Interns). It was conceived by Anton Zaitsev, a founder of Good Story Media and member of the KVN Parma team. Directed by Jeanne Kadnikova, the series starred Nikolai Naumov.

Swell Guys was set and filmed in Perm. Kolyan (Naumov), known to the police, is caught committing a petty theft; to avoid jail, he agrees to participate in a reality show. A camera operator follows him everywhere (filming his life, work and friends), and his only requirement is to live honestly. Swell Guys involved the whole city in its production; most of the series' over 150 characters are non-professional actors, often using their own names. The sitcom, with no fixed plot, was improvised by the actors, the director and the producers:

The situation was to be so ridiculous and paradoxical that whatever character was able to exist in it would be ridiculous, no matter what he said. We tell the actors you have to talk about that and that, and he or she improvises in the episode.

The series featured a gallery of city characters: bright young people, students, party girls, marginalized people, traders, hard workers, managers, businessmen, soldiers, policemen, criminals, and "the guys" (Kolyan and his friends). After several months, the entire cast became known in Perm and throughout Russia. Actor Konstantin Khabensky, Serbian volleyball team captain Bojan Janić, and writer Alexei Ivanov were fans:

I had a lot of fun watching Swell Guys... I liked the acting. It looked extremely real; the characters seem quite real, the replicas are exact, [and] the movie resembles real-life... In this series I first saw a new style of living born before my eyes... Do not forget, I was born in the Soviet Union. I saw people who are quite well off, feeling comfortable with the existing lifestyle, understanding its laws and avoiding conflict with it. And I'm interested in looking at people for whom such a life is quite common. It's like watching the inhabitants of the sea depths. It's interesting to see how things are going on at the bottom of the ocean. I cannot live there, but fish can. That's the way I interpret Swell Guys.

An award for a "criminal" series set in Perm was controversial. It was accepted by five members of the Swell Guys team: Anton Zaitsev, Zhanna Kadnikova, producer Yuri Ovchinnikov, director Sergei Dolgushin, and star Nikolai Naumov.