MOSCOW, OCTOBER 17, 2011 - RT, a global news channel with studios in Moscow and Washington, has started round-the-clock broadcasting in Philadelphia, adding 2 million households to the channel’s U.S. audience reach.
RT is partnering with MiND: Media Independence, a Philadelphia-based independent public broadcast station. RT is broadcasting on digital channel 35.4, and is also available on cable systems throughout the region, including, Comcast and Cablevision. As a result, RT programs are now available in 2 million households in Philadelphia and its suburbs. “Today it is especially relevant to expand the channel’s footprint in the U.S., given the growing popularity of RT as a source of information that’s alternative to the mainstream media,” says Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. “RT is a wonderful addition to MiND’s program services in Philadelphia,” said MiND CEO Howard Blumenthal. “We believe that people should ‘Question More’ - which is RT’s tagline.” The overall number of potential RT viewers in the U.S. has almost reached 50 million. Beyond Philadelphia, RT is available on cable in Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, San-Francisco, San Diego and Chicago. RT programming is also accessible across the U.S. via the GlobeCast WorldTV satellite platform. Nielsen Media Research* found that residents of Washington and New York prefer watching RT to other international news channels. Nielsen found RT's average daily audience in Washington is bigger than that of Euronews, Deutsche Welle, France 24, and CCTV News, the English-language Chinese news channel. In New York, Nielsen research indicates that RT’s daily audience exceeds the average daily audience of Deutsche Welle, Arabic Al Jazeera English and CCTV News. RT was launched in 2005. The channel broadcasts 24/7 from its studios in Moscow and Washington D.C. to over 100 countries and an estimated potential audience of 430 million. RT can also be viewed online at RT.com. RT was the first news channel in the world to top 500 million YouTube views. * Nielsen Media Research conducted the survey in the fall of 2010 with 2,192 residents of Washington, DC and 2,180 residents of New York.