Kommersant, (Moscow), August 29, 2003

Yesterday, RBC Information Systems announced the date when the first Russian specialized business news television will be launched - September 2, 2003. The television companies CNN and CNBC will be partners of RBC TV. With no competitors in Russia, RBC TV is expected to be watched by 2 million people by the end of this year and to receive more than $3m in revenues from advertising.

On September 2, 2003, RBC TV will start round-the-clock broadcasting via satellite channels of NTV-plus and Kosmos-TV, cable networks of Comcor-TV and Divo-TV as well as via cable and terrestrial networks. In addition to these means, business news will be available on decimeter terrestrial channels in Russian regions, in particular, in the St. Petersburg region, and on the RBC's Internet site. The TV channel will offer live broadcasting starting at 7 o'clock in the morning until 1 a.m. The majority of programs will be produced by employees of the new business television while interpreted news from CNN and CNBC will cover about 10 percent of the air time. According to Yury Rovensky, CEO and General Director of RBC Information Systems, the company's relationship with these TV channels will be much broader than envisaged by an ordinary license agreement, i.e. RBC TV will be able not only to use materials from CNN and CNBC but it will also have an opportunity to order separate programs and to use the wide correspondent networks of these leading global suppliers of business information.

According to estimates from the management of the new television channel, the audience of RBC TV will reach about 2 million people over the first two months of broadcasting. This figure will grow to 7 or 8 million by the end of this year, and in the future 12 to 14 million Russian businessmen will watch business news on RBC TV. Some experts are puzzled at these figures provided by the owners of the new business television, because according to the most optimistic estimates the total audience of satellite channels does not surpass 250,000 to 300,000 people. However, the RBC management is sure the new television will be watched by a much larger audience. "We are talking not only about individual subscribers but about whole companies," RBC's representatives were quoted as saying. "For example, Sberbank alone is one subscriber but with several thousand monitors. In addition, the audience of RBC's site is 1.5 million people, and a lot of them are likely to become our viewers."

RBC TV is a 100-percent subsidiary of RBC Information Systems. Investments in the project will reach $23m and the founders are going to invest another $5m in this project next year. The TV channel is expected to break even in two years and it will pay back and start bringing profits in four years. Earnings from advertising will become the only source of revenues for the new television as there will be no fee-based subscription for this television. The owners of RBC TV are expecting to receive $3.2m in revenues from advertising before the end of this year. According to Mr. Rovensky, they have already reached agreements worth $2.7m. Time for commercials will be sold directly via the RBC holding. "There are whole market segments that were not advertised at all earlier, such as auditors, construction, investment or consulting companies," Yury Rovensky was quoted as saying. "It is natural that they cannot and do not want to be advertised on public and political TV channels". The new television is set to receive $16m in profit from advertising in 2004. Experts believe that these plans are realistic. "The figure of $3.2m is quite realistic, at least the magnitude of revenues from advertising is exactly like this, especially since the fall season traditionally sees a boost in advertising," Sergey Krivonogov, the General Director of the Navigator DDB advertising agency, says. "Moreover, we have a well-developed category of premium goods which are worth advertising on such a television channel."

The only factor that can hamper the new television from implementing all these plans is its human resources strategy, experts believe. The thing is that anchors of business news programs will be former employees of banks and investments companies but not famous people and not even professional journalists. "It is easier to teach them read news in front of a video camera than to teach journalists economics," the RBC TV management says.

Konstantin Vorontsov, Yekaterina Lyubavina