Contemporary realization of enlightenment tasks of TV is considered in the article in context of cultural contradictions, stimulated by screen mediation of social communications. The request of society for audiovisual information grows outside mass media today: it has entered into document flow, mediates social ritual, in a new way enters culture. At the same time there is a devaluation of authenticity of a documentary shot in television practice, complication of the visual figurativeness built around oral forms of expression. The culture of oral communication presupposes that TV shows are meant mainly for acoustical perception, submitting their visual component to the spontaneity of oral speech at the different levels. To the person, whose social activity, work, daily routine are mediated by screen and do not lose at the same time their authenticity, today it is harder and harder to differentiate the sphere of journalism or art as conditional, "other" environments in which he himself becomes an object of the influence, a target of transformed audiovisual representation of reality. Broadcasters by all means raise the perceptual attractiveness of content in fight for the viewer, whose own activity grows in the media field and his communicative status loses definiteness. At the same time the priority of enlightenment tasks even in political segment of broadcasting is lost, and the social mission of the leading TV channels in audiovisual communication becomes doubtful.