22 January 2003 05:21
RUSSIA'S ORT TEM TELEVISION TARGETING BALTIC AUDIENCES CHANGES NAME, PROGRAM
TALLINN, Jan 22, BNS - ORT TEM, the most popular Russian television channel in the Baltic states, changed its name to
Pervyi Baltiiski Kanal (PBK, First Baltic Channel) from the start of the new year and began broadcasting films and
serials with subtitles in local languages.
The change in the channel's name is directly linked to the adoption of the name Pervyi Kanal (First Channel) and
a new logotype last fall by PBK's parent channel which earlier carried the names ORT and Ostankino, the official
representative of PBK in Estonia, Margus Merimaa, told reporters on Wednesday.
The program of ORT has been retransmitted under the name ORT TEM during seven years in Latvia and two years in
Estonia and Lithuania. Until last year the program was fully identical with that of the Russian state television
channel, the only difference being the commercial breaks which featured blocks put together for the local market,
Merimaa said.
>From 2003, broadcasts of the parent channel make up 80 percent of the roughly 18-hour daily program of PBK, the rest
being material acquired or produced by PBK, Merimaa said. The program is the same in all the three Baltic states except
for the commercial blocks, Merimaa said.
PBK has its headquarters in Riga.
"We're first and foremost directed toward the Russian-speaking population of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania," Merimaa said. "Our potential audience in the Baltic states is 2.2 million viewers, of them 550,000
in Estonia," he added.
PBK is the most popular television channel among Estonia's Russian-speaking residents and ranks fourth among the
preferences of all viewers in Estonia.
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