Kommersant (Moscow)
September 2, 2003
Rating of business television is impossible to define
Today, the first business television channel in Russian, RBC TV, went on the air (the Kommersant newspaper wrote in detail about it on August 29). The founder of the channel, the RosBusinessConsulting information agency, announces there will be no fee-based subscription to the channel, and still RBC TV is expected to break even in two years. RBC's CEO Yury Rovensky spoke to Kommersant correspondent TIMUR BORDYUG and explained how RBC TV was going to earn money by advertising.
- At what time and on what bands will RBC TV programs be broadcast?
- RBC TV is an around-the-clock television channel with 18 hours of live news broadcasting per day. Currently, it can be watched in two cities: selectively in Moscow (we use Kosmos-TV, NTV plus, Moscow cable operators, in the first place, Comcor-TV and Divo-TV, and Moscow cable and terrestrial operators) and St. Petersburg where we cover the whole city and the Leningrad region. Before the end of September, St. Petersburg residents will be able to see us on bands of local TV companies. Moreover, we hope to start RBC TV broadcasting in another 12 cities with population of more than 1 million people
- You announced that the new TV channel will live on revenues from advertising only. At the same time, you did not sign an exclusive agreement for selling advertising on your channel with any of the largest advertising agencies. Does RBC TV really believe it will be able to effectively sell its advertising time?
- Working with a business audience, the RBC agency demonstrated steady growth in revenues from advertising on the Internet over several years. More than 85 percent of advertising revenues came from our own advertising sales. This means we have an efficient advertising sales department. However, this is not the only reason why we decided to give no other company exclusive rights for advertising sales on RBC TV. The TV channel must meet the interests of all business layers, therefore it would be incorrect to send an advertiser with a budget of $5,000 to 10,000 to large media buyers or advertising agencies. However, we are not going to reject collaboration with advertising businesses completely. On the contrary, we have already reached agreements with a number of companies.
- Russian advertisers are used to paying for commercials on a TV channel depending on its rating. How are you going to estimate the ratings of RBC TV?
- It is impossible to speak about the rating of a business television channel in principle. This parameter cannot be estimated even for our foreign colleagues, CNBC and Bloomberg TV. The thing is, it is impossible to estimate ratings of business TV channels by traditional means. It is impossible to install measuring devices to register what channels are watched in houses of businessmen, high-income residents and socially active people. They will simply refuse it. Apart from this, our TV channel offers a new and unique prime time for Russia, i.e. day-hours. A significant part of the business television's audience will watch it at work. Thus, a company placing its advertising on our television will take into consideration data on the audience covered by the TV channel and statistical data on this audience. In addition, we will perform special research of our audience in several months after the launch.
- How much will advertising on RBC TV cost?
- Presently, a minute of advertising on our TV channel will cost $600 to $3,500 depending on the chosen time of demonstration. We will also offer various types of sponsor participation to our advertisers, such as placing an advertiser's logo during weather forecasts.
- Experts are certain there are no 2 million viewers among businessmen in Russia who will be watching RBC TV by the end of this year, as you estimate it.
- The critical mass of the TV channel's audience has already been formed. It is definitely incommensurable with a similar audience, for instance, in the USA, where people are consuming a larger volume of financial information, but it does exist. RBC TV is not a newly created broadcasting concept but a logical continuation of information policy implemented by the RBC agency over its ten years on the Internet. Currently, the monthly audience of RBC is more than 1.5 million people.
