How Russians watch TV in 2021. infographics

The Russian office of ECI Media Management, one of the clients of the official Russian audience meter Mediascope, at the request of RBC, calculated the audience figures for all federal channels for the first 11 months of 2021. Mediascope itself, approved by Roskomnadzor for 2020–2022 as a single measure of TV audience, publishes the results of the year on Russian TV in early January after the New Year holidays. But December, as the results of previous years show, has practically no effect on the final annual positions of channels.

The Rossiya 1 TV channel (part of the VGTRK state holding) again claims to be the first among federal TV broadcasters in 2021. According to the results of January-November, the rating of the flagship channel VGTRK in the audience older than four years was 1.76%, the share was 11.52%. Its main competitor is Channel One, which for the sixth year in a row takes second place with a rating of 1.48% and a share of 9.77% over the same period. The top three is traditionally closed by NTV (1.34 and 8.79%, respectively).

How channel audience is measured

The top TV channels based on Mediascope data are based on two key indicators.

Rating  is the ratio of all who watched a particular channel, and the entire population.

Audience share shows how many viewers a particular channel had relative to everyone who currently had their TV turned on.

Each broadcaster has its own target audience, but in order to compare channels among themselves, a common audience is used - all viewers over the age of four. Until 2020, measurements were limited to TV viewers in large cities with a population of more than 100,000 people, but since last year, the data includes TV viewing in small towns as well.