Page 48 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

Margarita Simonyan has been Editor-in-chief of Russia's international TV news channel RT since its launch in 2005. The channel has hadmany 'firsts' - it was the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news, and the first Russian TV station to launch its own virtual channel on YouTube. And this year RTmarks two important anniversaries

lot has happened recently, a lot of good things for RT. We are moving forward and reaching many goals that we set ourselves. In 2009, we launched a unique project - our online video agency Freevideo. As a result of the global economic crisis, many TV channels had to shut down their bureaux in Moscow. Nevertheless, events in Russia still need to be covered. Major outlets ran into problems when they had no video for coverage of important events. We created a special site freevideo.rt.com, where every day we upload video clips of broadcast quality - this can be clips from press conferences, reports, interviews. You can view the script and the shotlist for each video online. Initially we only provided the script in English, but now information is available in Spanish and Arabic, as well as French and German.

We are trying to increase the number of languages on offer to make the video agency Freevideo more accessible. In order to download video in broadcast quality you just need to register on the site. This gives you full access to topical videos as well as archive

material. Over 1500 users have registered since the launch which gives us confirmation that this is a much-needed resource. Among the major users are all the leading international TV channels and news agencies, as well as regional channels from over 85 countries worldwide. We have received a lot of feedback from TV channels in different parts of the world - they tell us Freevideo is a very valuable resource.

Yes, the launch of our Spanish channel had been planned for a long time and was a major step for RT. We began broadcasting on December 28th last year, and RT Spanish has been available to millions of viewers in Europe as well as North and South America. We produce a completely different kind of news, radically different from the mainstream. The channel is working on expanding broadcasting into other Spanish-speaking regions. I am sure that Latin America will love us, and if they let us into the cable networks in the States, then the Spanish speaking population there will have access via this platform too.

The channel's internet site actualidad.rt.com is a fully-fledged

multimedia resource - the button 'En vivo' provides access to RT live broadcasts with on air quality. It's great news for us that RT Spanish was nominated for the Broadcast Digital Awards 2010 in the Best Channel Launch category. We have no doubt that the Spanish channel will find its audience and be just as popular as our English and Arabic projects.

According to recent data provided by market research company Nielsen, in countries like Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia the audience of RT in Arabic for our Rusiya Al-Yaum channel is over 5m people - the Nielsen survey asked viewers which channels they had watched in the previous 30 days. The findings show that in these countries Rusiya Al-Yaum is watched more than the leading European channels in Arabic - Deutsche Welle, France 24, and the Chinese CCTV Arabic - combined.

The English channel is also rapidly gaining viewers. Last year we were able to increase significantly the number of networks where RT broadcasts. So when we began broadcasting in Canadian networks