RT (Russia Today) first international news channel launched in 2005, RT is now a global, round-the-clock news network of nine TV channels, broadcasting news, current affairs, and documentaries, with digital platforms in six languages and sister news agency RUPTLY. Round-the-clock news channels in English, Arabic, Spanish, German, and documentary channel RT Doc, in English and Russian, broadcast from Moscow, while RT America airs from Washington, RT UK from London, and RT France from Paris. Today, RT is available in more than 100 countries spanning five continents.
RT creates news with an edge for viewers who want to Question More. RT covers stories overlooked by the mainstream media, provides alternative perspectives on current affairs, and acquaints international audiences with a Russian viewpoint on major global events.
RT is the winner of the Monte Carlo TV Festival Awards for best 24-hour newscast, and the only Russian TV channel to be an eleven-time Emmy finalist. In 2021, the network has been nominated for News and Documentary Emmy Awards for its VR project ‘Lessons of Auschwitz’, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the Soviet Army. RT also has been shortlisted for International News & Current Affairs Emmy for its coverage of the 2020 military conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan (2021), the reportage on the crash-landing of the Superjet 100 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport (2020), the breaking news of the massive fire in the Russian city of Kemerovo (2019), the coverage of the humanitarian crisis in the Iraqi city of Mosul (2018), the 70th session of the UN General Assembly (2016), Guantanamo Bay inmates’ hunger strike (2014), the Occupy Wall Street protests (2012) and US President Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow (2010).
RT America’s ‘Boom Bust’ financial show was a Daytime Emmy finalist for Outstanding Main Title and Graphic Design for a Live Action Program in 2020, while Pulitzer-prize laureate Chris Hedges, host of ‘On Contact with Chris Hedges,’ secured RT America its first Daytime Emmy nomination in 2017, as an Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host. RT holds dozens of medals from the New York Festivals for its documentary and news programming, and has been repeatedly recognized by numerous international awards competitions and media organizations, including the Cannes Lions, the Webby Awards, the Lovies, the Shorty Awards, the Association for International Broadcasting, and the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, among many others.
RT works with leading international media and public sphere personalities, and currently airs or has aired programs anchored by renowned broadcasting legend Larry King, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Pulitzer-prize winner and Emmy-nominated journalist Chris Hedges, the “most dangerous financial expert” Max Keiser, former First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, former President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, legendary football coach José Mourinho, top American news personality Rick Sanchez, and French media icon Frédéric Taddeï, among others.
In 2016, RT filmed the first-ever 360-degree video of Earth from space, and in 2017, in collaboration with Roscosmos State Corporation and Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, presented the world with the first-ever panoramic video filmed in open space, during a spacewalk.
In 2018, RT founded the Khaled Alkhateb International Memorial Awards to honor the sacrifice of RT Arabic war correspondent Khaled Alkhateb. Khaled died while working in Syria in 2017. The awards recognize the brave journalists who report from conflict zones around the world.
RT AUDIENCE
RT has a total weekly audience of 100 million viewers in 47 of the 100+ countries where RT broadcasts are available, according to a survey on TV news consumption by Ipsos, a leading audience research firm. RT enjoys its largest regional audience in Europe, with 43 million weekly viewers in 15 European countries. In the US, RT has a weekly audience of 11 million. Across the Middle East and North Africa, where news consumers were polled in 15 countries, RT has a weekly TV audience of 11 million. RT is in the top five most popular international TV channels in 10 Latin American countries.
In South America, RT is part of the national TV network of Argentina and Venezuela. It was picked up by a state-operated satellite system in Bolívia and a national TV channel in Cuba.
Online, RT is the top non-Anglo-Saxon TV news network in terms of traffic: as of January 2021, RT websites, collectively, had more than 150 million monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb.
RT Arabic leads among all other Arabic-language television news channels websites in terms of visits and unique visitors, surpassing the likes of Al Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and CNN Arabic. The online audience of RT Spanish is ahead of Spanish-language websites of international news channels, including BBC, Euronews, France 24, and the Latin American channel TeleSur.
In 2013, RT became the first news network to surpass one billion views on YouTube. In October 2018, RT Arabic became the first broadcaster of non-Arabic origin in the region to generate over one billion views on YouTube, leaving behind the Arabic versions of CNN, BBC, and DW, among others. RT Spanish has over three billion views on YouTube — more than all other Spanish-language versions of international TV news outlets. In 2020, RT became the first TV news network in the world to hit ten billion views across its channels on YouTube.
RT is an autonomous, non-profit organization that is publicly financed from the budget of the Russian Federation.