Gazeta (Moscow)
September 2, 2003

Russian Bloomberg goes on air

RBC TV, the first Russian business TV channel, begins broadcasting. The first business television channel goes on the air in Russia, promising around-the-clock broadcasting of business news, BBC reports. Pilot broadcasting of this new project launched by the RosBusinessConsulting information agency continued for almost a year. RBC TV will present 16 hours of live programs out of its 24 hours of broadcasting a day.

The cost of the new project was about $23m. The largest part of this sum, $13m, was provided by private foreign investments and another $10m was invested by RBC.

The company's leaders estimate the potential audience of the new channel at several million people, i.e. the upper tenth of the Russian population that earns a third of all revenues in this country.

The TV channel is expected to break even in several years through advertising of goods and services for businesses. As it was reported, 85 percent of advertising time has already been sold for the next year.