Tycoon_s TV branches out to Europe.

ORT International has started broadcasting this month, bringing Russian-language news, documentaries and dubbed Mexican soap operas to what the company believes is a growing audience of expatriates and Russophiles created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the first phase of the channel_s launch, a Norwegian satellite will beam the service to Central and Eastern Europe. Phase two will extend it to Western Europe, with Israel and Australia joining the areas covered within three years. The process promises to give the world a taste of the gaudy and often highly politicized television that has replaced Soviet drabness in Russia during the past ten years. If the channel can overcome its prodigious language barrier, it could also make Mr Berezovsky Russia_s first truly international media baron. Mr Berezovsky, a mathematician who turned to selling cars during the perestroika era, has built a multibillion-dollar empire and weathered endless storms as a member of President Yeltsin_s inner circle. The size of his stake in ORT is not known, but he is thought to be a major shareholder who pays the salaries of several of the channel_s most visible anchors and commentators. Earlier this year, Yevgeny Primakov, the then prime minister, curbed Mr Berezovsky_s use of ORT.The new channel may signal a move to diversify beyond a Russia that Mr Berezovsky fears could turn hostile should the Yeltsin camp founder in the forthcoming elections. Its audience appears limited, however: 1.25 million Russians and Russophiles in Europe currently watch ORT legally on cable or by "pirating" it from Russian satellites, the company estimates. If the international version can win over half of them, it will be deemed a success.