Viewers are stuck in TV channels – Newspaper Kommersant No. 68 (7513) of 04/19/2023

Despite the release of new exclusive series on video platforms, viewers remain loyal to TV: according to the Kinopoisk Pro Index, immediately after the release of new seasons or TV series, such as Sklifosovsky or Polar Waltz, broadcast on Rossiya 1, user interest to new online resources is declining. Analysts believe that this is due to the high audience base of TV, as well as the availability of new products, which often require additional payment on online platforms.

The original content of Russian online platforms still cannot overtake TV projects in terms of Russian interest, according to the Kinopoisk Pro Index data. The top 3 in the period from late January to mid-February included the television series Sklifosovsky (Russia 1), Major (Channel One and TV-3) and Ivanov-Ivanov (STS).

From late February to mid-March, the top three included projects that were broadcast on TV and in online cinemas: the first place in the rating is headed by the series “Knock on My Door” (broadcast on Kinopoisk, Wink and TV-3), it competes with “ Chaliapin” (a joint project of “Russia 1” and Okko), the “Ivanov-Ivanov” tape is trying to hold its position.

In mid-March, the series “The King and the Jester” (produced by “Kinopoisk”) was in the top of interest: the picture topped the rating with 305 points, but it began to lose ground after reaching the mark of 516 points. The melodrama Polar Waltz, which was broadcast on Russia 1, took the championship from the tape.

During the New Year holidays, the top interest was headed by “Major” (711 points), but since January 9, the index of interest in the project began to decline (to 169 points), and it was quickly overtaken by the Turkish film “Knock on My Door” (178 points). The next top was headed by Sklifosovsky (170 points). Almost all this time, the original content of online cinemas either did not enter the top 10, or remained in the lower positions of the rating.

The program policy of TV channels is one of the main factors in the attention of the audience to the series, Ksenia Boletskaya, Director for Interaction with the Industry at Yandex, explains. She confirmed that among the popular Russian series of 2022 in the Kinopoisk Pro Index, the vast majority are television projects. Only one series, Ms. Boletskaya noted, made it into the top 20 popular projects of the year – Chikatilo from the Okko online cinema. But the original series of online platforms, according to her, are beginning to gradually reduce the gap: “In March, the share of interest in the original series of online cinemas reached 45.7% of all interest in domestic projects.”

Audience coverage directly affects the rating, and it is obvious that free TV has a much higher rating than paid online cinemas, so the projects that go on the air occupy the top lines of the rating, confirming the trend in Start. Despite this, the project of the online cinema “Vampires of the Middle Band” was in the second place of the top for several weeks, the press service of the service added: “Therefore, the original platforms have potential.” Wink did not answer “b”.

The audience of large TV channels is still larger than the audience of online cinemas, so there are more viewers for individual TV projects, Dmitry Kolesov, director of the new technologies department at J’son and Partners Consulting, believes. He added that there is “such a phenomenon as a” shelf “: the average TV viewer has seven to ten channels in his memory, between which he switches, and the average number of subscriptions to online cinemas per user is three.”

Showing on federal channels and on-air promo influences viewers’ interest in the series, says Alexei Byrdin, general director of the Internet Video Association: “At the same time, it is the series created with his participation that, as a rule, go on the air of a TV channel.” In turn, online cinemas rarely give their exclusive projects to TV and show them only in paid subscriptions. “At the moment, the repertoire of on-air channels is many times smaller than that of online cinemas with their catalogs of many thousands, so it is easy to focus the interest of a large television audience on a particular film or series,” said Alexey Byrdin.

Julia Yurasova