RT NUMBER ONE TV NEWS NETWORK ON YOUTUBE WITH RECORD 7 BILLION VIEWS

MOSCOW, OCTOBER 16, 2018 —RT has reached a record 7 billion views on YouTube, maintaining its undisputed leadership among all  TV news networks, far surpassing the total number of views of BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and Euronews. RT’s YouTube channels also have over 10 million subscribers.  

Among RT’s most popular YouTube content of the last year is the video of young football players recreating the most spectacular goals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia on the RT International channel. In Spanish, one of the most popular videos was footage of the assassination attempt on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, and RT Arabic’s story about Iraqi women who took up arms in order to protect their homes became one of the most-watched videos in Arabic.  

In 2007, RT was the first Russian TV network to begin posting its content on YouTube, and in 2013, it became the world’s first news network to reach 1 billion views. “To establish such a connection with the audience and attract viewers so that they come back to you again and again so as to hit a billion views – that’s a remarkable achievement,” said the then Google VP and Head of Content for YouTube Robert Kyncl. 

RT is the only Russian television network to have earned six Emmy nominations for news programming. In 2018, it won two gold medals at the prestigious New York Festivals and took gold at the US International Film & Video Festival. In 2017, RT won in five categories at the Shorty Awards—a competition honoring the best of social media. In 2016, RT received seven trophies at the European Lovie Awards for its achievements in digital media and won the “Oscars of the Internet” Webby People’s Voice Award, beating out BBC, ABC, NBC, and the New York Times. In 2013, RT took home the golden nymph at the Monte Carlo TV Festival.