Continued from http://www.ceetv.net/readItem?code=25494

CEETV: You also organized such events for original ideas, like The Next Big Thing and now you have Future Media Lab, can you tell us more about this?

OT: We have already received 1.380 applications. We started it 3 years ago and it was met with good reaction but a little bit slow, but now, due to current events a big number of people are willing to participate. And what we see from the past is that there were so many interesting ideas, and at least 10 people whom we discovered during the process are now working with us closely. So this is also a way to find young talents to be with us, to develop local formats.

CEETV: How about the development of the advertisement market? There are very controversial figures coming out; last year it was officially -15%, and recently ZenithOptimedia said -62% this year. What are your expectations?

OT: The most important question is which currency are we talking about; if we are speaking about hryvnia probably it will be the same or a little bit higher level than it was a year ago. But if we consider that the currency rate dropped from 8 to 23-24 hryvnias per dollar at the end of last year. You can see the difference.

CEETV: So how hard it is for you to operate such a big media group?

OT: The first step was to cut dramatically our acquisition budgets, which are in hard currency. And we don’t know yet the figures of this year but definitely it will be a dramatic drop. So instead of that we are investing in people, investing in our local productions, from economic point of view and which is important from strategic point of view because we are investing in human capital and we are investing in our library. So because all this product remains with us it means that we can use it for our different platforms, niche channels, internet and so on. So it makes sense strategically.

CEETV: What was your performance in the first quarter?

OT: The first quarter, as well as the last year was quite good in terms of shares, I think that as a group we increased weekly shares thanks to out original productions. And we are also the only Ukrainian media group with constant growth for the past 4 years. Our kids channel also had an outstanding performance.

CEETV: And how important is for you your international business? You are growing the coverage of 1+1 International and you also launched the news channel Ukraine Today, are you satisfied with the results?

OT: With 1+1 International it’s definitely a commercial project for us, from a commercial point of view it makes money, so it’s good and we see big interest for it. Ukraine Today is more like our civil initiative, and because we feel that we need to tell to the European audience what’s really going on here, not with the message of propaganda, but with a message of real facts and information. And to confirm that this is a social initiative, we recently launched an international supervisory board, where we create the NGO Ukraine Today, whose main aim is to support the independent policy of the channel from one side, and from another side it’s an opportunity for us to raise additionally money for the development of the channel, to develop Russian language services, and also develop some programs, internet presence and so on. Now I think we are available to more than 10 million households in Europe through cable and to a larger audience via satellite and internet, so for Ukraine Today is a big agenda now to increase its distribution and improve quality of the program.

CEETV: A year has passes since the war started. How have the relationships with your Russian partners changed since then and what do you expect will happen in the future?

OT: We definitely speak less with them, if previously it was a day-to day conversation now it’s less, and when meeting with them we try to avoid hard topics, because when speaking we are speaking with professionals not with politicians. I think there is a little bit of misunderstanding of how they imagine we live, because if you don’t live here it’s hard to explain, especially for them who are living in a very propagandistic environment. We call ourselves a country which is in front of the war so and we need to adapt it from day to day activity because you cannot live in such high level of emotions. So we need to reflect immediately any types of problems which appear each day. If we don’t find this adaptation instinct it will be hard to continue our normal life. For them to understand this is quite hard and that is why we now feel more relaxed with western partners but life is continuing and we hope that one day we’ll speak once again the same language.

CEETV: Tell us about your plans for the fall season?

OT: We are not ready to announce, but we are preparing now one big new show. In general we going to increase the number of our daytime locally produced content. We’ll have more locally-produced series and new programs which are coming in the late series 22.00-22.30 timeslot. There will be two more series coming this season, locally-produced on 1+1, TET and especially 2+2 which is facing a very big challenge of producing much more public affairs programs, sketchcoms and series. Before it aired mostly Russian series, now there is great opportunity to discover new options.