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Estonia's first ever Russian language TV channel begins broadcasting

Xinhua, September 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

State-owned Estonian Public Broadcaster (ERR) launched its first ever full time TV channel, ETV+, in the Russian language on Monday.

The Russian-language TV channel is the first since Estonia's independence in 1991 from the former Soviet Union.

The new channel, which budgeted around four million euros (4.5 million U.S. dollars), had for years been a big dispute among different walks of Estonian society as some believed it would be a tool of state propaganda against Russian and its effects in Estonia. Others believed it would serve the Estonian Russian-language population who make up nearly a fouth of the whole Estonian population.

Since start of this project, ERR announced that the new channel was not a tool for state propaganda or a weapon against Russian state propaganda. Rather, it was a tool to involve the Russian population more in Estonian society.

"We create and enhance common values, ones that take us forward, not drag us back. We are part of a society that places equal value on all its members," said an official statement of the new TV channel.

During the summer of 2015, Estonians had a chance to bring forward their own ideas for the new channel, which included creative ideas from the Russian-speaking community to develop a TV channel for them and about them, the statement said.

The 30-minute daily Russian-language news program "AK," which until now was broadcast on ERR's ETV2 channel, will be transferred to ETV+ and will be broadcast few times a day with updates, short and big shows, including a one-hour analytic show on Sundays. Endit