The seven major TV channels in Russia – Channel One, Russia 1, NTV, CTC, TNT, St. Petersburg TV and REN TV – showed 12% less Russian premiere content last year than in 2013.
According to KVG Research, the decline, to a level of 10,600 hours in 2014, was influenced by several factors. Besides the slowdown of TV advertising, there was the additional airtime the top three channels allocated to the Sochi Winter Olympics and World Cup in Brazil.
Alongside this was an increase in news and general political broadcasting, related to foreign policy issues and the situation in Ukraine, as well as the internal corporate strategy of TV channels sourcing content to broadcast.
Despite the 12% fall, the market dropped in monetary terms by 3% to a level of R43.1 billion (€562.9 million). This was the total value of premier content in broadcast on the seven major TV channels in 2014.
Russian market players now forecast a reduction of between 13% and 26% in purchase prices, depending on the type of content, this year.
KVG Research identifies entertainment as accounting for 29.6% of premier content in 2014. It was followed by TV series (28.5%), talk shows (22.7%), documentaries (9.1%), educational (6.8%), TV films (3%), feature films (0.6%) and content for children (0.1%). Meanwhile, TV series accounted for over half of all spending (52%), with the next largest investment being in entertainment (20.2%) and talk shows (12.8%).
Red Square, Comedy Club Production and Mir Reality Production remained the leading producers of premier content. However, while Comedy Club Production’s volume increased by 15%, Red Square’s and Mir Reality Production’s fell by 27% and 12% respectively.
