The Russian public broadcaster VGTRK (RTR) and telco Rostelecom have decided to combine their non-terrestrial TV channels into a single grouping.
Vedomosti and AKTR report that RTR currently operates 13 such channels, which have a combined audience of 39 million viewers each month.
Rostelecom’s five non-terrestrial channels are meanwhile viewed by 21.4 million people each month, and the total revernue of all these channels in 2013 amounted to around R1.4 billion (€28.7 million).
Sergei Kalugin, the president of Rostelecom, said that the company’s non-terrestrial channels, though not part of its core business, were profitable.
It is therefore effectively passing their management over to RTR and will become a shareholder of a large joint venture.
The latter will now become the leading operator of non-terrestrial channels in Russia, ahead of Viasat, which currently distributes nine channels.
