RT America

» see rt.com/usa as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

rt america was a us cable channel funded by the russian government. it did not carry in turkey. our russian-state-media exposure is the sputnik türkiye website and the russian embassy twitter feed. the direct-to-cable version of that operation ran in washington dc from 2010 to 2022 and never appeared on my screen.

the channel launched in february 2010, run by t&r productions on behalf of tv novosti in moscow. the model was to carry rt's international editorial line through english-language studio programming produced in the united states, with american hosts. larry king moved his interview show onto rt america in 2013 after leaving cnn. ed schultz took a nightly slot in 2016 after leaving msnbc. thom hartmann's the big picture ran from 2011 until 2022. the distribution ran through directv and dish network with roku for streaming, at a scale small enough that most american households never saw the channel show up in a guide.

on 1 march 2022, four days after russia invaded ukraine, directv accelerated the contract expiration on rt america and pulled the channel effective immediately. roku dropped it the same week. on 3 march t&r productions told employees the channel was halting live production and laying off almost all on-air and off-air staff. general manager mikhail solodovnikov's memo cited unforeseen business interruption events. the equipment left in the washington dc studio was sold at auction on 9 august 2024.

~ the dossier ~

~ what the channel actually did ~

rt america's newsroom presented itself as an american news operation covering issues the mainstream us press was said to underreport, from pipeline protests to nsa surveillance. the shows were staffed by american journalists and hosts, some of whom explicitly framed the network as an editorial-independence outlet. the us department of justice disagreed and required t&r productions to register as a foreign agent under fara in november 2017. the fara filings made the funding line public in a way that ended most of the ambiguity about what the channel was.

~ the distribution collapse ~

the shutdown was not a formal legal ban. no us regulator revoked a broadcast license because rt america never had one to revoke. it was a carriage decision. directv had the largest of the small footprints, and once the war started the political cost of paying for the channel outweighed the small subscriber-fee value of keeping it in the bundle. once directv left, the whole distribution economics of the channel collapsed inside two days.

~ what got buried ~

the whole category of a foreign state broadcaster operating an english-language studio on us cable dies with this shutdown. china's cgtn america had a similar operation and drew similar fara filings. rt america is the one that got cut on air. what remains is the online rt.com site, streaming through non-us providers and via vpn from within the us, but the cable-tv version of the operation is done.

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