Russia’s Tricolor launches coronavirus lockdown educational service

Russian pay TV operator Tricolor has teamed up with the country’s ministry of education to launch a new educational service to provide distance learning help during the coronavirus crisis.

The My School Online service is available nationwide and is free-to-view via the Tricolor set-top box, even for customers with an inactive subscription, according to the operator.

The service is also available on Tricolor’s OTT app.

The channel provides 30-minute classes based on the school curriculum. Most of the material is devoted to two compulsory subjects, Russian and mathematics, with other material available on-demand.

The channel’s schedule mirrors the school day, with eight lessons per day, time-shifted for Russia’s multiple time zones.

Tricolor said the service would be broadcast until the end of the school year.

“We believe that it is very important to help students master the material of the general education programme that they need to pass their final exams. For this, we have enlisted television resources and launched educational broadcasting with enormous coverage, maximizing the access to lessons from the country’s leading teachers,” said Russian minister of education Sergey Kravtsov.

“Pupils and teachers today are in a difficult situation: we all know what difficulties they have to face using distance learning, and final exams have not been cancelled. In close cooperation with the ministry, we have prepared broadcasting resources, which will make the educational process as convenient and stimulating as possible in the presentation of materials and the knowledge gained. Tricolor has the largest subscriber base of satellite customers in Russia, so several tens of millions of viewers will see the channel’s broadcasts, including residents of remote regions of Russia, where there is no digital-terrestrial or cable television, and the availability of high-speed internet is very limited,” said Roman Makhaev, sales and customer service director, Tricolor.