Television has lost a quarter of its viewers to the Internet

Russia's Channel One general director Konstantin Ernst believes that in recent years television has lost between 15 and 25 percent of its audience. Ernst thinks that those who have abandoned television now prefer to use the Internet as a source of information and watch DVD movies for entertainment. In order to stop the exodus of viewers, Ernst insists on paying greater attention to programming content. In his view, Russian television channels have become very similar to one another in terms of content, while the amount of air time they devote to movies far exceeds that of Western channels. This makes young viewers turn their backs on television.