Walk onto the trading floors of any bank in Russia and you will find that the televisions are all tuned to the same channel. This month the new broadcasting arm of RosBusinessConsulting (RBC), Russia's premier information media company, celebrates its first year in business. Pitching itself somewhere between CNBC and CNN, the broadcaster was Russia's first 24-hour news channel and has a strong financial bent.

RBC followed through with Russia's first real IPO. The company sold 25% of its stock last April, which has trebled in value since then. "The launch was well received," says Yuri Rovensky, RBC's general director. "It was the first time this sort of format has been seen in Russia - information and analysis rather than news and entertainment."

The company has outperformed all expectations. Transmitted by satellite, cable and a limited broadcast in the part of Moscow with digital equipment, the 24-hour coverage was initially planned to reach between 5 million and 7 million people but after only a year in operation more than 32 million people in over 40 large cities across the country can . tune in to the latest: global news or catch up with the day's action on the RTS.

"At first we though that we would reach a tiny group of people as a niche player, but we have found the audience was bigger than we expected," says Rovensky.

Rovensky says the company was hoping for turnover of $16 million for the whole of 2004 but as the channel's viewers are almost exclusively young, rich and active in Russia's economy, advertisers have flocked to the channel, spending $12 million over the first six months of this year. The station is expected to break even ahead of plan next year.

The television station was designed to take advantage of the other, information media RBC had already developed. An internet-based wire service was established in 1995 - Russia's first internet company - and the group also owns a business-oriented newspaper. "We had already built the factory. TV was just one more channel to distribute this information," says Rovensky.

The company is continuing to expand. Between 30,000 and 40,000 Russians living abroad now tune into the news via a streaming retransmission of the channel over the internet ( rbc.tv.ru) and the company hopes to tic up with a cable network that is being developed by Russian telecoms giant Sistema that should roll out next year.

RBC has joined the scramble to provide content but the tussle over who gets to distribute it is equally tough. US-based Moscow CableCom, Moscow's fourth-largest cable operator, has big plans, but it is early days yet as all the players jockey for position. MOCC plans to provide a western-style cable service that not only