Transition to digital TV will cost 122.4 billion roubles.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a Federal Targeted Programme (FTP) "The Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation in 2009-2015". Under the FTP, 122.4 billion roubles will be spent to introduce digital television in Russia. One of the trickiest stages will be to provide households with consoles that receive digital signals, experts warn. At present the penetration rate of television sets that support the MPEG-4 format is "insignificant," experts say.
The FTP "Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation in 2009-2015" was approved by Prime Minister Putin, the Telecommunications and Media Ministry has announced. The total cost of the programme is 122.445 billion roubles, the same figure as was mentioned in the FTP concept approved in late September. Out of that sum 76.366 billion roubles will come from the Federal Budget and the remaining 46.079 billion roubles from off-budget sources. Among the main items of the FTP are the construction of ground digital networks (60.2 billion roubles), the building of satellites (26 billion roubles) and the introduction of DRM standard broadcasting (13.684 billion roubles).
Under the programme, 100% of households will be covered by television by 2014 and will be able to receive the mandatory TV and radio channels such as Channel 1, Rossiya, Culture, Sport, Vesti-24, NTV, Petersburg Channel 5, the Children's and Youth Channel (in succession to Bibigon and Telenyanya) as well as Radio Russii, Mayak and Vesti FM. In 2008, 1.6 million people in Russia had no television and only 33% of the population could receive the mandatory channels.
Mandatory channels will become part of the so-called First Multiplex (the package of channels broadcasting on one frequency). Under the programme three multiplexes will be created, comprising twenty TV channels. But unlike the first multiplex, the participants in the second and third ones have yet to be determined by the Federal Tender Review Commission. They will be created with off-budget money, partially financed by the channels that want to be members. By 2015 100% of the population should be able to receive second and third multiplex channels. By that time major cities are expected to get the fourth and fifth multiplexes, high-definition TV broadcasting and mobile TV (DVB-H), also to be privately financed. The earliest to be switched to digital TV will be border regions, networks are to be created in the Far East and Siberia Regions in 2010. However, analog television in the regions will not be switched off until 95% of the population has acquired television sets or special consoles capable of receiving signals in the MPEG-4 format (in which TV programmes will be broadcast). According to RATEK, at present there are about 100 million television sets in households. But the Association finds it hard to assess the share of equipment that supports MPEG-4 though it thinks that share is insignificant, because such television sets only went on sale several years ago. In 2008, 7.2 million television sets were sold in Russia, of which 30% did not support MPEG-4 and 70% are plasma and LC TV sets (some of which also do not support MPEG-4). From the results of 2009, RATEK expects that total sales of television sets will increase by 8% to 7.78 million. "On average television sets are changed every three years, but that period increased somewhat after the crisis," RATEK's public relations director Anton Guskov says.
Anna Balashova, Inna Yerokhina