KVN (Russian: КВН, an abbreviation of Russian: Клуб Весёлых и Находчивых, Klub Vesyolykh i Nakhodchivykh", "Club of the Happy and Inventive") is a Russian humor TV show where teams (usually teams of students) compete by giving funny answers to questions, improvisations, prepared sketches. The program has been aired by Channel One since November 8th 1961. Eleven years later, in 1972, when a few programs were being broadcast live, Soviet censors found the students' impromptu jokes offensively anti-Soviet and banned the KVN for fourteen years. The show was revived during the Perestroika era, in 1986, with Alexander Maslyakov as its host. It is one of the longest-running programs on Russian TV. It also has its own holiday on November 8th, the birthday of the game, which KVN players celebrate every year since it was announced and widely celebrated for the first time in 2001.
The game of KVN is a turn-based task-based team competition in front of live audience judged by panel of judges. Typically, each team is asked to complete 4-5 assignments such as:
