There were a lot of vivid events over the past television season, both negative and positive. As expected, a trend towards entertainment, which is unsophisticated to put it mildly, continued.

Everything light is in vogue: from light drinks and cigarettes to light urban design (for example, the Manezh Square near the Kremlin that turned into a children's playground). Obviously, television did not become an exception. This was inevitable. The ability of television to create parallel worlds where it is comfortable to live in is in a special demand in the epoch of changes.

However, the magic side of television does not necessarily interest everyone. Many people do not want to live somebody else's life, when it is a fantasy. They do not want to escape from reality. These people prefer to adjust reality to themselves, they understand what they are striving for, they can achieve set goals under their own steam. They do not constitute a majority, but they are the core of the nation. These are they for whom we lauched a new television channel called RBC TV.

Today, the channel's core audience exceeds 2m people who know how to work and correspondingly to make profit. It is a safe bet to call our audience the jet set of Russian society. RBC TV viewers are people with a good education that spend a lot of time at work. Actually, the figures speak for themselves. According to the results of research conducted by COMCON Media, incomes of our viewers are twice as high as the average income in Russia. In comparison to the country in general, there are 5 times more financiers, 2 times more car owners, 2 times more managers and owners of businesses among our viewers. I would call these people a new kind of audience. To a great extent, although they are called a new audience, they have of course always existed. The matter is that they were not considered to be a separate category until recently, as there was no special television channel that targeted them. They did not have a functional television channel that could be compared to a working instrument or, to be more precise, a competent consultant. This consultant is independent, impartial and it has necessary information. That is why it is trusted.

Over a short period of time, RBC TV has managed not only to form a consumer habit but also to make advertisers understand that now they have the possibility of addressing the most affluent audience in Russia without overpaying by addressing a non-target audience. It was not an easy task in the beginning. "We do not place advertising on television" was a standard answer in every second advertising department of banks and investment companies. The problem was not even to persuade them of the necessity of placing advertising on our channel. It was that the already prepared advertising budgets of large companies did not have such an entry as 'television advertising.' Indeed, there was no business television till September last year and advertisers, whose target audience was bankers, financiers and businessmen, usually chose other ways to reach their audience. However, the situation has changed. Among RBC TV's advertisers are financial, large fuel and energy companies, producers of expensive cars, and representatives of the market of elite and office real estate and the office equipment market. Advertising agencies recommend their clients place information about the top of their product range on the channel - our viewers have good taste.

The RBC TV brand has gained recognition abroad as well. An agreement with CNBC Europe was reached for preparing a weekly program on the Russian economy that will be broadcasted on CNBC channels. This was not the first step RBC TV took towards the West. Expansion into western markets started together with the channel's launch when RBC TV began to make stories for CNN. But of course, our priority is still Russia where more than 32m people can watch the channel already. I am sure that there will be more and more viewers of RBC TV in our country.