ARTE and RT sign innovative content agreement

ARTE and RT sign innovative content agreement *** European cultural channel and Irish national media organization to boost Irish arts and culture content with international audiences ***

Today in Dublin, Anne Durupty, Vice President of ARTE GEIE and Chief Executive Officer of ARTE France, and Dee Forbes, Director-General of RT , signed a new content agreement that will bring Irish cultural content to an international audience.

ARTE and RT have each undertaken to contribute a minimum of 250,000 per annum for an initial period of two years for the development of co-productions in 2017 & 2018, particularly in the fields of arts, culture, factual, history and natural history.

The agreement also provides for closer links between the two broadcasters' online offerings, in particular through ARTE's online platforms; ARTE Concert and ARTE in English along with RT Player. Over the next two years audiences across Europe will be able to access participating Irish music events and performances via ART 's online platforms while audiences in Ireland will be able to access a rich online world of European arts, cultural and historical programming through RT Player's new arts and documentary hubs.

Says Anne Durupty: This agreement will enable ARTE and RT to work on several top-quality co-productions per year, helping to enrich their cultural output. With this partnership we're continuing to enhance ARTE's profile and visibility in Europe, one of the essential missions given to the channel by its founding treaty. Our objective, in the months and years ahead, is to showcase, via our digital offerings, the richness and diversity of European creativity to audiences across the continent of Europe.

Says Dee Forbes: This is an important partnership. With this agreement we will enable more Irish programmes and performances to reach new European audiences. As Ireland's national media organisation, showcasing the best of Ireland, particularly in the area of arts and culture, is something that RT takes very seriously. The online offering is also exciting, with RT offering for the first time selected arts programming, documentaries and music broadcasts to European audiences through ARTE Concert and ARTE in English, while audiences in Ireland can avail of a carefully-curated selection of fascinating, compelling and current arts and cultural content from ARTE on RT Player. We look forward to encouraging audiences everywhere to explore this fantastic resource.

RT now becomes ARTE's ninth European partner. A representative of RT will sit in a consultative capacity in ARTE's decision-making bodies, including the Programme Committee and the General Assembly of Shareholders. The agreement is for an initial two-year period, after which it may be renewed.

Notes to Editors:

ARTE:

ARTE is a Franco-German public-service broadcaster which offers a wide choice of high-quality programmes to 55% of Europeans in their own language. ARTE programmes are broadcast in French and German, 24 hours a day, in HD. In addition to making programmes available to French and German-speaking communities across Europe, over 600 hours a year of magazine programmes, documentaries and other programmes are also subtitled into English and Spanish and made available to English and Spanish-speaking audiences on ARTE's new English and Spanish-language video-on-demand services, arte.tv/en and arte.tv/es, with a new Polish-language VOD service to debut in late 2016.

This unique pan-European free video-on-demand service is co-financed by the European Union "to foster EU integration through culture by providing new subtitled versions of selected TV programmes across Europe.

As the European Culture Channel, ARTE provides cultural programming that fosters understanding among Europeans and brings people together. Since its creation in 1991, ARTE stands for cultural diversity and multilingualism. ARTE's mission is to uncover new talent, encourage artistic creativity, and preserve and promote Europe's cultural heritage. ARTE supports talented documentary-makers and film-makers as a co-producer, and premiers ambitious new documentary and feature-docs, daring drama and series. ARTE also offers live music and performances and avant-garde arts magazine shows, plus a daily news service that covers stories and events that are of vital interest to peoples across Europe, endeavouring to represent fresh angles on the big stories that affect us all.

LINK:	http://www.rte.ie/about/en/press-office/press-releases/2016/1103/82898...
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