FREESAT BRINGS RT IN HD TO 3 MILLION UK HOUSEHOLDS

MOSCOW, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 – Freesat, a free-to-air digital satellite platform, has been making RT’s English new channel available to UK viewers since 2008.

RT had begun broadcasting in High Definition format in December 2012, following the network’s move of its studios to a new, state of the art facility. UK’s largest satellite platform, BSkyB, has also begun carrying RT in HD this year. RT was the third most watched news channel overall in the UK in Q3 2012 after BBC News and Sky News according to BARB, reaching 2.5 million viewers*. A survey by Kantar Media showed that UK viewers tune into RT over other channels due to its “different take on news from mainstream media”, “informative news coverage”, and its range of stories of interest to the audience. “We’re very glad that an increasing number of cable and satellite providers in the UK are making RT available to their audience in high definition format,” says Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor in chief. “Thanks to fast adoption of HD by Freesat, even more of our UK viewers can enjoy RT programming in the highest possible quality of delivery.” Freesat was launched in 2008 as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV, and currently brings over 150 TV and radio channels to more than 3 million households in the UK. RT is a global international news network that broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish from its studios in Moscow and Washington, DC, and is available to 630 million viewers worldwide. Pew Research Center’s 2012 study named RT, whose YouTube channel has passed 840 million views, as the largest provider of news video footage on the world’s largest video sharing platform. RT is the only Russian TV channel to garner two nominations for the prestigious Emmy International Award. * https://www.rt.com/about/pressoffice/rt-watched-by-25-million-in-uk-in-3q2012-ahead-of-fox-and-al-jazeera/