After his appointment, Kulistikov, 48, met with NTV staff and promised to continue a course of "innovations and changes" set by outgoing general director Nikolai Senkevich to restore NTV's popularity.
"I would not have come here if I didn't agree with the course set by [Senkevich]," Kulistikov said.
Kulistikov worked at NTV from 1997 to 2000, winning praise for his skilled steering of the channel's news department.
He left in February 2000 to work at the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency but returned after state-connected Gazprom's controversial takeover of the channel in April 2001 to oversee news coverage and serve as deputy general director. A year later, he moved to the state-owned All-Russian State Television and Radio Co., which runs the rival Rossia channel.
As the director of news programming at Rossia, he played a leading role in engineering pro-Kremlin coverage of the news. He simultaneously served as deputy chairman of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Co. until his surprise return to NTV on Monday.
Senkevich presented Kulistikov to the staff, praising him as a top professional who would "continue the successful development of one of the largest nonstate companies in Russia."
Senkevich, 36, was picked Monday by the board of NTV's parent company, Gazprom-Media, to replace Alexander Dybal as its general director.
Dybal was appointed board chairman of Gazprom-Media.
A Gazprom-Media spokeswoman declined to comment Monday on the reasons behind the shuffle.
Igor Yakovenko, head of the opposition-minded Russian Union of Journalists, was quick to suggest that NTV will continue its slide toward Kremlin "loyalty, compromise and obsequiousness."
NTV's "Svoboda Slova" anchor Savik Shuster, however, welcomed Kulistikov's return, calling him "an absolute professional," Interfax reported.
Federal Press and Mass Media Agency chief Mikhail Seslavinsky called the appointment "absolutely positive."
Former NTV star Leonid Parfyonov, who was fired by Senkevich in June over editorial differences, declined to comment, saying he would rather speak with his former colleagues at NTV first, Interfax reported.
Once the country's leading privately owned channel, debt-laden NTV was taken over by Gazprom in 2001 in a move that was widely criticized as an attack on independent media. Since then, NTV has gradually adjusted its once critical coverage of President Vladimir Putin's policies. Its ratings have fallen as one director was replaced by another and many of its best-known journalists left.
Gazprom named U.S. citizen Boris Jordan as the channel's director after the takeover, and replaced Jordan in January 2003 with Senkevich, despite his lack of television experience.
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