Russia’s Channel 1 to launch in China
July 7, 2017
By Chris Forrester
BBC Monitoring is reporting that Russia’s state-run Channel One TV and China Central Television (CCTV) have signed an agreement to launch the first Russian television channel in China.
The deal was sealed at the Russian-Chinese media forum held on July 4th as Chinese President Xi Jinping was visiting Moscow, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.
It was signed by Channel One chief Konstantin Ernst and the head of CTV-Satellite TV Program Co of China. According to Ernst, the channel called Katyusha will broadcast in Russian with Chinese subtitles. “Broadcasting will begin this year,” he told journalists.
“We moved rather quickly. We reached all agreements within two years and signed the distribution contract today. I think this is a pace that is fast on a titanic scale, ” Ernst said.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of another state-run Russian TV channel RT (also known as Russia Today) told the forum that it was necessary to increase the availability of Russian TV channels for Chinese audiences.
“Anyone in Russia can watch Chinese TV at any time. We are very hopeful that with increasing confidence and with such good proximity between our countries and our leaders this issue will be resolved and we will observe a significant increase in the possibility for the people of China to get acquainted with our media,” Simonyan said.