FORBES NAMES RT’S RUSIYA AL-YAUM TO TOP 3 ONLINE TV CHANNELS IN ARAB WORLD

MOSCOW, DECEMBER 27, 2012 – Rusiya Al-Yaum, RT’s Arabic-language news channel, made the list of the Top TV Channels Online in Forbes Middle East’s latest ranking of Top Media Online in the Arab World.

The award recipients were recognized at a December 26 ceremony held in Dubai. In an official press release Forbes noted that Rusiya Al-Yaum “is gaining momentum; according to Google Analytics data, Rusiya Al-Yaum recorded a new visit rate of 51.37%, the highest amongst the three online tv channels.” Coming in third place after UAE’s Al Arabiya and Qatar’s Al Jazeera, Rusiya Al-Yaum’s website (arabic.rt.com) recorded 50.11 million visitors and 26.40 million unique visitors between August 31, 2011 and August 31, 2012. "I think this is a wonderful result for our channel. In just five years we have made a huge leap and are now successfully competing with the leading Arabic television channels, and in some metrics are actually surpassing them,” said RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan. “I congratulate all of the employees of RT’s Arabic channel with this victory.” Launched in 2007, Rusiya Al-Yaum broadcasts around the clock from RT’s Moscow studio and reaches more than 350 million viewers across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Starting on December 26, 2012, its programming is available in High Definition. 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 550 million viewers worldwide. Pew Research Center’s 2012 study named RT, whose YouTube channel has passed 840 million views, as the largest provider of news video footage on the world’s largest video sharing platform. RT is the only Russian TV channel to garner two nominations for the prestigious Emmy International Award.