A real tiger was walking around the Gostinny Dvor hall at the first anniversary of the RBC TV business television channel. Financiers, politicians and businessmen who came to celebrate were as happy as little children to see the tiger. But only a few wished to come close to the animal. It is amazing that for many of them it takes as much courage to sign multi-million-dollar contracts or make far-reaching decisions for the country, which for many of them is an everyday job, as to scratch a tiger's ear or pull his tail.

- But tell me, please, why a tiger? - I asked General Director of RBC TV Artyom Inutin this question.

- We wanted to show that television is first of all a video. Last year when we celebrated the launching of the television channel we had an elephant. A big baby elephant. A note: RBC TV is a 24-hour channel. It works every day. Its active broadcasting is from 7 a.m. till 1 a.m., and replays its news and analytical programs from 1 a.m. till 7 a.m. The television channel distributes its signal via satellite channels (NTV Plus, Kosmos TV), cable networks (Comcor TV, Divo TV), cable and terrestrial broadcasting, regional operators, and the Internet. By the end of 2004, the television channel is going to reach over 40m viewers. According to sociological surveys, RBC TV's viewers are people between 25-55 years old, with a higher education and above-average incomes. Top- and middle-level managers, employees of banks, investment companies, funds, exchanges, audit and consulting firms, representatives of federal and regional government institutions, Russian businessmen and top foreign managers, specialists and businessmen, all these people are interested in the business and financial information that RBC TV has to offer them.

- Artyom, tell me, please, does Mr. Putin watch RBC TV?

- I think the whole government of Russia watches us. And there are many indirect indications of that. Our government officials are the top people of major companies, which are our main newsmakers. Our correspondents communicate with government officials and can tell that they watch our channel very attentively. In addition, the presidential administration has approached us recently and asked to distribute our signal to the Kremlin Palace. Before that, as far as I know, RBC TV could be watched in only two buildings where the presidential administration works.

- You achieved great success in this first year. How did you do that?

- First of all, you have to know exactly what you want or what viewers want. We are not wondering around with our content. Our main trump card is that we have direct contact with our core audience. Before introducing a new program or making any changes to our programming we ask our focus group. They are Russian decision-makers. They provide us with the most valuable information that in no way can be provided by consultants or be contained in research. We are always not 95% but even 100% sure what we want and whom we are doing this for. Our viewers are company heads, top managers, traders and dealers. We always stay in touch with them. We know what information and commentaries they need first of all. Meanwhile, they give comments to us. We stay in touch with our viewers via the Internet and a telephone hotline. Normally, we would ask them a straight-forward economic question. While processing these questions it becomes clear that our average viewer has a higher education and expertise in the economy, and we know exactly what he/she is interested in. Funny things happen too. Once, as we commented on a stock market collapse, grandmas started calling us and asking: "What shall we do now? Maybe start buying extra food for storage?" Apparently, those at home watch our channel too.

- Do you compete with other television channels?

- There is no competition with traditional channels. It just makes no sense. If you take the information that we cover, only 30% is the same as other channels have. The feeling is as if we are in different countries. Of course, it is very important for us to be number one in providing the latest information. And this is our advantage. We can switch between different working modes very fast. Our program schedule is flexible and we can give any piece of news at any time, even if it is not news that we would normally cover. We have news blocks every half hour, compared to other television channels that have them once in two or three hours. Even if the hot news arrives in-between or news blocks, we can put it in our crawler. In this case, we are ahead of everybody almost all the time. One day, when YUKOS was living through some unpleasant moments we had a program The Sphere of Interests scheduled with the topic The Circus as a Kind of Business. On that day, we had to change the entire program schedule. There were even jokes that maybe we could change the name of the topic to Business is a Circus. We have 18 hours of active broadcasting and program reruns for the other six hours. If any catastrophe occurs, we can switch to 24-hour live broadcasting. We can change the program schedule and stay live. This is a lot easier for us to do than for any other channel. We do not compete with the others, we are a specialized information television channel, which is watched by those interested in our information.

- I heard that you cooperate with Western information channels. Why are you interesting for them and they are interesting for you?

- Major Western information channels, such as CNN and CNBC, simply don't have any other source of Russian economic news. And the Western economic community has been showing tremendous interest in our country lately. They order reports from us, because they know that they will receive professional information, correct statistics and true analytics from us. We are interested in doing that too. The audience of CNBC is 260 million. These are exactly the people, who invest in the Russian economy, and who lack information on Russia. They are 100% exactly our audience. Our mission is to make information about our economy as transparent as possible. The image of Russia is the only tool for attracting investments in our country. And we help build this image.

- What is your dream audience?

- According to our estimations, the audience of RBC as an online resource has reached its maximum already. Two million people use it on a constant basis. As far as the TV project is concerned, we have the same goal here. The surveys that we conducted last spring showed that some 1.5 million people watch RBC TV now. I think we will have two million quite soon, maybe we already have them. As far as the total coverage is concerned, it is somewhere around 30-35 million now. The audience of a Western channel similar to RBC TV would have to be some 4-5% of the employed population, and 7-10% during difficult economic periods. You can't go further than that. As far as RBC TV is concerned, we cover the most hard-working, leading and well-off part of the population now.

We couldn't imagine that our television channel would become so popular.