NTV+ wins Russian national channels

Website: Rapid TV News
Russian pay-TV platform NTV+ is to carry the Russian CIS states’ national channels.

Subscribers will have to pay a “nominal” 50 Roubles (about $1.60) to watch the channels.

BBC Monitoring reports that Russian Federation Minister of Telecoms and Mass Communications Igor Shchegolev said at a meeting with the Russian president dedicated to CIS countries’ media presence in Russia on March 10: “The issue of distributing CIS member states’ national TV signals in Russia has been thoroughly studied.

The best solution will be to place these channels on the NTV Plus satellite platform.”

He also added that talks with CIS partners had already been held in order to understand how interested they were in broadcasting over Russia.

Shchegolev added that much had been done by Gazprom Media holding company which had rented additional satellite capacity.

For its part, Gazprom Media general director Nikolay Senkevich said that the holding company “had made a decision not only to provide the NTV Plus platform to CIS TV broadcasters, but to do it at its own expense”. “For national broadcasters it will be free,” he explained.

Senkevich added that new potential NTV Plus subscribers would be able to watch national TV channels “for a symbolic payment of R50 if they chose to.

“All a potential subscriber will need is to install NTV Plus and to get a contract for a particular channel they are interested in,” Senkevich said.

He mentioned that new subscribers interested in watching CIS national channels would not necessarily need to connect to an NTV Plus basic package.

However, additional discounts on such TV channel packages will be made for them.

Sergey Sitnikov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications, said at the meeting that it would be as easy as possible for CIS national TV companies to get a licence for broadcasting in Russia.

“The procedure is quite easily done. One has to register a media outlet in the Russian Federation and get a licence. It will not take long,” he said.

Story link: NTV+ wins Russian national channels