Ogoniok, a Russian weekly owned by Kommersant, reported plans to create an international Russian-language TV channel. The project will be managed by Valery Komissarov, a former member of the Russian Duma, who claims to have a background in entertainment television and who announced to the press last month that investors had been found for the project.
Komissarov said that he will launch local Russian-language channels in different countries and then organize them on an international scale from Russia.
About one hundred Russian-language TV and radio channels are active in the world today, according to figures from the International Television and Radio Academy (IATR). All are run independently, IATR executive director Sergei Erofeyev told Ogoniok, and that figure includes cable as well as Internet broadcasting.
Among the major channels are international versions of such leading Russian channels as Pervyi Kanal (First Channel), RTR, and NTV.
Another one is RTVi, a channel founded in 2003 by Vladimir Gusinsky, a Russian oligarch who fled Russia after Vladimir Putin came to power. RTVi offers “non-governmental broadcasts” from its headquarters in New York and from its facilities in Cologne, Moscow, and Tel Aviv.
But most Russian-language TV channels broadcasting abroad are local ones. Many started from nothing and are still run with very few resources.
According to rumors that have spread since Komissarov’s declaration weeks ago, the channel’s network will be deployed worldwide. Furthermore, significant sums will be devoted to the project, most likely by the government, Ogoniok reported from industry experts who study the prospects of attracting private investors for such high-profile projects. “Any such channel must expect extreme difficulties in attracting an audience as well as advertisers,” warns one of them.
The Russian government already sponsors Russia Today, an international news channel in English.
Another instance of state-sponsored international media is Voice of Russia (VOR), a radio station on the air since 1929. VOR now broadcasts to 160 countries in 38 languages and claims to have 109 million listeners around the world.
