RT America, the sister network to Russia’s state-sponsored RT, is ceasing production after being dropped by DirecTV and Roku following the invasion of Ukraine.
T&R Productions, the production entity, sent a note to employees announcing the shutdown.
“Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations,” Misha Solodovnikov, general manager, wrote in a memo. He blamed the shutdown on “unforeseen business interruption events.”
Holland Cooke, who hosted a show for RT America, wrote in Talkers that “I agreed to do a show this week, and had booked and was scripting on the topic of refugees, a snapshot of desperate Ukraine pilgrims’ plight. But that show won’t air. In an all-hands meeting Thursday (3/3) at noon, management spared remaining RT-ers the dilemma. We’ve been canceled, by cable/satellite/online distribution platforms.” CNN first confirmed the shutdown and the employee memo.
RT America had locations in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York and Miami. In the memo, Solodovnikov wrote that employment would end around May 3.
RT America’s production shutdown, just over a week after the invasion began, follows a cascading series of actions in which U.S. distributors and other organizations have been distancing themselves from Russian interests. Major studios have paused release of movies in Russia, and social media outlets put limits and labeling on their accounts. Even Solodovnikov himself was ousted from the board of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
T&R Productions, the Russian-owned media company that runs RT America, was required to register as a foreign agent for the Russian government in 2017. T&R was tasked with producing English-language programming for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.
RT America drew such names as Dennis Miller and William Shatner to the lineups, as well as Larry King before be died last year. Ora.TV, the company that supplied the Miller and Shatner shows to RT, said earlier this week that it was pausing production on those shows given the “invasion of Ukraine and the tragic humanitarian crisis.”
Ukrainian officials had called on distributors to drop state-sponsored Russian programming, arguing that it was fueling the spread of misinformation about the invasion and the war. The European Union announced that it would be banning EU distributors from disseminating RT as well as another outlet, Sputnik.
EU President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement, “We will not let Kremlin apologists pour their toxic lies justifying Putin’s war or sow the seeds of division in our Union.”
Another U.S. distributor of RT America, Dish Network, has not yet said if it would pull the network, but that it was “closely monitoring the situation.”
Scottie Nell Hughes, who anchored a daily show for RT America, defended the network on Twitter earlier this week, after new broke that DirecTV was dropping the channel. “It’s great to know how big of an impact we were making on the world by showing all sides of a story, no single political ideology. Their obsession to take down shows the greatness of the network in reach & their fear of people being exposed to something other than their narrative,” she wrote.
Still, NewsGuard, the site that issues trust ratings for news, said that the RT website “regularly advances false claims and propaganda promoted by the Kremlin, and omits or refutes facts and positions that do not align with the Russian government.”
RT launched in 2005 as Russia Today, and, after securing distribution on major U.S. distributors, established a newsroom in Washington, D.C. RT America, the sister channel, was launched in 2010.
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