Russian television channels did not break into normal programmes last night to announce the death of the country's first head of state following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Instead, the regular soap operas, dramas and game shows which are best compared with Italian TV, continued as normal, with the death of Boris Yeltsin relegated to a few minutes of air coverage on the regular news programmes.
Major channels such as NTV had wider coverage of the French election results and the visit to Moscow of the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, giving little more than a cursory obituary to a man who dominated global headlines throughout the 1990s.
The main 7pm news bulletin on one of the major channels, RTR, led with Mr Yeltsin's death, but limited its coverage to one lengthy obituary package and a follow-up studio interview with a sympathetic journalist, before moving on to other issues.
It may be that the news broke too late for the main bulletins, leaving little time for packages to be assembled. However, international stations such as CNN and BBC world were giving it much more attention.
Or it could be that Mr Yeltsin's legacy is one best forgotten by most Russians, who remember the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent decade of near anarchy as a painful time economically and politically.
Although the announcement did come officially from the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin's response was low key.
He offered his condolences to the Yeltsin family - doing just enough to honour a former president, but not enough to link the two of them closely in the public mind.
Although Mr Putin first came to power under Mr Yeltsin, he ousted the latter's cronies, replacing them with people he trusts, either from his home town of St Petersburg or the KGB.