Dear Sir or Madam
On April 6, Radio Canada International announced that its Russian section will be closed on June 26. We the undersigned beg you to reconsider that decision as we firmly believe that RCI's excellent programming in Russian language must be preserved.
RCI's Russian service is almost the only authoritative source of information about Canada in Russian language, providing it to Russian-speaking people, primarily to those in Russia and other countries of the CIS. RCI's programming is the only first-hand source about Canada's position on various international issues, as well as its domestic political and cultural life, social trends and so on. We believe that the cessation of RCI’s broadcasts in Russian will adversely affect interest in Canada, thereby resulting in lower political and economic cooperation, reduced investment attractiveness and a decrease in the inflow of tourists.
Russia and Canada share a position in the northern part of the world and continue to have a lot to learn from each other. We also bring to your attention the importance of using diverse distribution platforms for international broadcasting, i.e. traditional radio broadcasts on short wave as well as programming online.
To attract an online audience in Russia it will be necessary to retain some radio transmission or there will be no motivation to visit the RCI site. This is the only way to retain the audience of RCI's Russian service.
We call upon CBC to overturn its decision to terminate the Russian Section of RCI and find ways to increase its resources due to its strategic importance to Russia and Canada.
Thank you.
