Gazprom Media acquires Hip-Hop TV channel A-One

Gazprom Media has acquired 49 percent of Hip-hop music TV channel A-One, reports newspaper Kommerstant.

Shares in the Hip-Hop channel previously belonged to the owner of the Eurasian Pipeline Consortium, businessman Alexander Karmanova. Gazprom Media has owned the shares in A-One since the beginning of April.

Gazprom Media hopes to revamp the A-One TV channel into the decidedly less Hip-Hop “TNT Music.”

In Russia, there are more than twenty music TV channels. According to TNS Russia, a media data analysis firm, the most popular music channels are Mus TV (with an average coverage for the first quarter of 2016 at 4.3 million viewers over the age of 4-years-old), RU.TV (2.5 million), Shanson TV (0.75 million), Bridge TV (0.58 million) and Europa Plus TV (0.47 million).

Gazprom Media is owned by Gazprombank, whose main shareholder is the state owned oil company Gazprom.