The Latvian incumbent Tet has announced plans to launch a Russian language channel on May 21.
On air for 24 hours daily, 5TV will offer popular reality and travel shows, entertainment programmes, TV series and films of various genres, including comedy, detective, romantic and drama films, as well as animation and family films. The films and series offered by the channel will be recorded in Russian, as well as in the original language, with Latvian subtitles be available for all broadcasts.
Commenting on the development, Uldis Tatarcuks, chairman of the board at Tet, said: “We work in a highly competitive global television market, so our customers’ viewing habits and needs are our priority. Unfortunately, we see that Latvia’s successful success in combating content piracy in recent years is beginning to slow down. Providing Latvian viewers with more opportunities to watch content. We will offer a new channel with entertaining, reliable, true and verified content. In addition, we hope that we will soon be able to offer reliable local news in Russian”.
Kaspar Ozolins, CEO of Helio Media, the channel’s producer, added: “Currently, there is a situation when the Russian-speaking audience is leaving the Latvian information and economic space. Since February this year, 60% of the time spent on TV screens is spent on Russian and other foreign TV applications. Latvian advertisers are further shifting their budgets to foreign sources, so it is expected that the Latvian advertising market will lose up to 3 million euros a year, thus not only expanding the population’s choice, but also we will also strengthen the Latvian economy”.
Tet notes that ratings show channels in Russian are among the most watched and also popular with the Latvian-speaking audience. For example, in April, among the Latvian-speaking audience, the 5th favorite channel was PBK, only slightly behind LTV7 and TV3 Life, and the 9th favourite – 3+. In turn, among Russian speakers, the top nine channels were PBK, 3+, LTV1, TV3, LTV7, TV3 Life, STV Pirm? !, TV6 and 360TV.
5TV will initially be available to Helio interactive TV, Helio terrestrial TV and entertainment platform Tet + subscribers.
