Kiev Media Week continues with interesting presentations, discussion panels and round tables this week.

During the panel discussion Challenges Create opportunities. Global Market Conforms to New Realities of the CIS Region, which was held as part of the FORMAT SHOW, representatives of international distribution companies presented their vision of the Ukrainian content market and told the audience how to make original content more attractive for the foreign colleagues.

According to Sabrina Duguet from All3Media, in a shrinking market and in the circumstances of devaluation and loss of Russian partners as co-producers, production of local adaptations of existing scripted formats is one of the best options for the Ukrainian TV channels during the crisis. This implies less financial risk than the launch of new original projects.

Nicola Söderlund from Eccho Rights confirmed his interest in original Ukrainian formats as an international distributor and noted that such projects as Crack Them Up by Studio Kvartal 95 and Bessmertnik (Everlasting) by channel Ukraina aroused great interest among the international audience. He also noted that the current financial situation is a window of opportunity for Ukrainian producers who now have the ability to focus on developing their own formats.

During the conference Pay TV in Ukraine, which was held yesterday, during the second day of the event, Vladimir Borodyansky, head of StarLightMedia, said that he is ready to make FTA channels paid, at least on DTH.

Borodyansky expressed his frustration because of the reaction of Viasat representatives as they did not want to start talks without the participation of Zeonbud, the national DTT platform operator. But suddenly Oksana Ferchuk, Viasat managing director, agreed to consider the possibility of coding the signal.

As things stand at the moment it is obvious that all four media groups – not only StarLightMedia – would want to make their free-to-air channels paid: the Universal Program Service still has too many channels included, content production costs keep on rising and the advertising market is falling deeper. The viewers would still watch channels of the Big Four, as they are very popular.

During the same conference the head of SLM commented that the costs for the media market in Ukraine are not less than 700 million USD but may be much higher – several billions. Answering the question asked by Oksana Ferchuk, Viasat managing director, why not to cut down expenses, Borodyansky said that the management of any media group knows how to make it profitable. But some of them won’t be profitable. So, they don’t want to ‘help’ competitors by reducing expenditures on production.

He said that it would be much better to finally complete the transition to DTT, as it is the fourth year already when StarLightMedia is paying for both analog and digital signal. The price tag is about 60-70 million UAH a year, and the other three media groups pay no less, so it is at least 1 billion UAH paid within the whole period of simulcast. The money could be invested into production instead.

As part of the conference Film.UA presented its new channel Film.UA Drama. The PR and marketing director of the company commented that in 2014 over 200 million people watched Film.UA’s content. The new channel will offer not only reruns but also premiere series.

The event also hosts Kiev CoProduction Meetings and during the second day of the event there was a panel called International Coproductions in Europe. The first segment was about documentaries and the second one about fiction. Axel Amo from SVT commented that there is a general trend of the audience getting older and that 80-85% of younger audiences watching content on other than TV platforms. He also noted that co-productions are always a good option and he personally visits various festivals and events to look for partners to produce documentaries.