MOSCOW, JULY 16, 2012 – Official ratings by the UK’s Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board show RT scoring higher viewership* than other foreign news channels measured by BARB, including Al Jazeera English, Fox News and Euronews.
More than half a million UK residents tuned in to watch RT weekly, according to BARB. That is more than four times greater than those who watched Fox News, more than double the number for Euronews, and significantly above Al Jazeera’s viewership*. BARB is the organization that provides official TV audience measurement in the UK. BARB collects overnight data on TV viewership of more than 250 channels that broadcast in the UK through the set-top-box technology which tracks the watching of specific programs in participating households. Its findings are publicly accessible and are among the most credible statistics of their kind available in Britain. RT’s recent BARB ratings support earlier findings by Kantar Media in a separate research study, which showed that in the UK, RT boasts higher weekly viewing rating than other major international English-speaking TV news channels, including Bloomberg, Deutsche Welle, France 24, China’s CCTV News and Iran’s Press TV. According to the study, almost two-and-a-half million viewers watch RT in the UK. Only for 2011 RT’s UK monthly audience has grown by 40 per cent. RT is a global international news network that broadcasts in English, Arabic and Spanish from its studios in Moscow and Washington, DC, and is available to 530 million viewers worldwide. RT became the first TV news channel in the world to pass 700 million views on YouTube. In 2010, RT became the first ever Russian channel to garner a nomination for the prestigious Emmy International Award, in the News category. RT streams online at RT.com. *For four consecutive weeks of June 04-10, June 11-17, 2012, June 18-24 and June 25-July 1