RIA Novosti: Russian state TV’s Crimea film attracts audience share of 40 per cent – research

Tower and Building Inside Kremlin

(RIA Novosti – March 17, 2015)

Russian state television’s heavily promoted drama-documentary about the annexation of Crimea, “Crimea: The Road to the Motherland”, attracted an audience share of 39.6 per cent of viewers aged 18 and over, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on 17 March, quoting data from market researchers TNS Gallup Media.

The programme was shown on official state channel Rossiya 1 late on the evening of 15 March, the eve of the anniversary of the disputed Crimean referendum. Made by Rossiya 1 news presenter Andrey Kondrashov and running for almost three hours, it included two interviews with Vladimir Putin, in which Russia’s president said he had been ready to put Russia’s nuclear weapons on standby during tensions over the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea, and alleged that Russians in Crimea were in danger before Russia annexed it.

According to TNS Gallup Media, the programme attracted a rating of 12.7 per cent. The audience share figure denotes the number of people aged 18 and over who watched the programme expressed as a percentage of the total number of people watching TV at that time, while the rating figure denotes the number of people who watched the programme expressed as a percentage of all Russians aged 18 and over.

In Moscow, the audience share was 40.6 per cent, while the rating was 14.7 per cent, TNS said. “According to Rossiya 1’s data”, the programme generated “one of the highest audience interest indicators for any television project over the last few years”, RIA Novosti said.

 

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