Viewpoints: acquisitions strategies

Irina Chernyak
Acquisitions Executive
TET TV Channel
Ukraine

What are your acquisition strategies?

TET TV Channel is one of the national Ukrainian channels that began in February, 1994. At the moment, it is being positioned as a channel for audiences between the ages of 5 to 50-years-old, with an average share of 3,9% (as per 2007). Since 65% of our audience is female, obviously our acquisition strategies are dictated based upon our audience's preferences. And it answers the last part of the question regarding the programs we are looking for. At the same, I would like to highlight Russian produced programs based on international formats, which are effective for us in terms of rating-forming, and definitely are of major interest.

Fear Factor

What are the most successful titles you have acquired?

Among standard acquisition deals, I would like to mention the Ukrainian-produced weekly Sunday talk show with our well-known and loved host Oksana Marchenko (Oksana Machenko show), which was put on the air in October 2007. Also, I would like to mention our recently acquired world-known and successful shows, such as "Fort Boyard", "Fear Factor", and "What not to wear". Besides our separately standing large volumes of children and teenager-oriented programming, including series and bright, quality animation, such as Scooby Doo, New Addams Family, Corneil&Bernie etc. The most successful show on TET is Russian reality show "Dom-2" (rat 1,93%, shr 5,73%) as per general audience, and of course, the top ratings are within young audience from 15 to 35 – rat 2,62% and share 11,35% accordingly. "Dom-2" has been successfully aired on TET since September, 2005, and it is definitely a rating-forming content for our channel. Besides, such Russian-produced shows as reality show "Prohibited zone" (rat 1,53 %, shr 4,71%) and investigation show "The Price of love" (rat 0,92 %, shr 4,76%) and scandalous talk show "Okna" (rat 0,92 %, shr 3,29 %) work really well for us.

What are the coming trends in the TV programming market in the Ukraine?

Concerning the coming TV programming trends in the Ukrainian market, I would say it is 3 genres – entertainment shows ("Dancing with Stars", "Star Academy"), political talk-shows ("Freedom by Savik Shuster", "Freedom of Speech") and quality female audience oriented love story series ("Tatiana's day", "Magic Love"), either self-produced or in cooperation with Russian production companies for simultaneous premiering at Russian and the Ukrainian channel.

What are your acquisition plans for 2008?

Taking into account the huge success of Russian-produced content, we have recently agreed to acquire Russian version of reality show Big Brother, a production based on the Endemol format, as well as other programs of Russian production. However, I do not want to give you the wrong impression that our main acquisition strategy in 2008 is all about Russian-produced content. Thus, at the moment, we are in process of concluding the very first for the channel, a deal for programs from 20 th Century Fox; also TET TV Channel has long-lasting agreements for quality content from CBS Paramount, Buena Vista, Warner Bros, Endemol, Bavaria Media, Adventure Line Productions, and DIC for acquiring content of various genres, including animation, TV series, reality shows and other entertainment content. Today, the Ukrainian market is constantly growing, not only top channels with a share of 20%, but those who reach 7-10% gradually transfer from finished American series to Russian-produced, and finally to self-produced content. Taking into account such a tendency, TET TV Channel faces a perspective to start its own series and program production in cooperation with Russian TV channels, so as a result, this coming season we are in search of formats both for series and various program productions.