MOSCOW, APRIL 09, 2012 — Almost two and a half million UK viewers watch RT, preferring it to other international news channels. That’s according to a nationwide poll by leading British marketing agency, Kantar Media.
RT now reaches an audience of 2.4 million UK viewers and the channel’s monthly audience is growing by 40% annually**. RT boasts higher viewer numbers in the UK than other major English-language news channels including Bloomberg TV, Deutsche Welle, France 24, China’s CCTV News and Iran’s Press TV*. RT is 9 times more popular with British viewers than Deutsche Welle and one and a half times more than France 24. Respondents mentioned RT’s “different take on news from mainstream media”, “informative news coverage”, and its range of stories of interest to the audience when explaining their choices. The poll also found 67 percent of viewers regard news reports by mainstream media such as BBC News, CNN or Sky News as biased, especially when covering the Middle East, domestic and international stories. Kantar Media carried out the research across Great Britain in November 2011. The company interviewed a representative sample of 10,000 UK residents. Kantar Media is an affiliated company with Kantar Group, one of the world’s largest networks providing market research and consulting services, and part of the WPP organization. * Based on weekly audience ** Against the results of a similar study in the autumn of 2010