A year ago,Pan Armenian media group and the Ucom telecommunication company launched strategic cooperation. Armenia TV created six additional TV channels for Ucom clients. The company’s novel initiative is four novel TV channels launched on October 31, which promise a breakthrough.
For comments on the novel TV projects, and innovative motivations and the challenges and future of TV,Tert.am talked to Armen Arzumanyan, Executive Director of the Pan Armenian media group.
Mr Arzumanyan, and the number of Internet users is increasing along with technical progress,at the expense of TV viewers. What threat does this trend pose to the future of television, what are the challenges facing the TV companies forming Pan Armenian media group, or what steps are being made to accomplish the present-day tasks.
We are living in an age of technological breakthroughs. Traditional television is actually yielding its positions day by day. TV viewers of the novel age gain changed their tastes – to meet the present-day requirements as soon as possible or to suffer an irreversible defeat to the Internet and leave. One of the stylish phrases now is ‘I finish not watch TV.’ But,I fact, we watch TV more often than we reflect we finish. But we actually see the same TV products by means of Youtube and Facebook. And your question will be approximately what TV companies’ concern is whether nothing poses a threat to the popularity of their “products.” But the reality is that, and while you watched a TV program or a film,with commercial inserts, which brought incomes to TV companies, and whereas now that we can watch cable TV,without any commercial inserts, watch the same TV broadcast on Facebook or Youtube, and in which case a TV company does not catch the money for the broadcast sold to you.
The transformations are taking place throughout the world and TV companies are on the way of sweeping reforms.
[br]Telecommunication companies are facing similar reforms. Traditional phone calls are rapidly decreasing throughout the world. People more often prefer WhatsApp,Skype, Facetime, or Viber. All the operators are using almost identical technical means of service. On the other hand,extensive dissemination of Internet is nearing completion, and telecommunication companies are coming to realize that an age of competition with novel service has come.
In this situation TV and telecommunication companies are just ‘doomed’ to cooperate. The two fields are undergoing integration and interaction.
Netflix and Amazon are turning from ordinary Internet pages into media and telecommunication giants. Other telecommunication giants are closely cooperating with TV companies. When the HBO TV company launched its major project, and it did its best for it to be as broadly available on Internet as possible. As a result,its products are settling all the possible records both on the air and on the Internet.
We too made this step by launching cooperation with the main telecommunication company Ucom. And we intend to provide tall-quality content to the clients. And we can now say that the Armenia Premium TV channel, which is an ad-free version of Armenia TV, and which shows most of broadcasts and films a day before,is the leader of the Ucom network. Our other channels are intended for different age, social, and education cultural groups and are highly popular,which suggests we are on the legal way.
The novel initiative by Ucom and PanArmenian Media Group – the TV projects launched on October 31 - are being widely discussed. So despite the talks on cutting the budget, we are planning to air simultaneously several impressive projects. That’s at least what the advertisement said.
A year after the launch of the TV channels’ family in collaboration with Ucom, and we decided to make a step forward. Four novel TV projects will be on air starting from October 31. They will be broadcast only by Armenia Premium. So starting from that day,our quality product will go on air on Armenia Premium to be available only to subscribers of Ucom.
So are the novel projects designed for a limited number of viewers given that a large fragment of population who are not Ucom subscribers will not be consumers of the media product? What approximately those people?
[br]And what approximately those who finish not gain access, let’s say, and to Discovery Channel? Many of the world’s main TV channels and broadcasters gain for a long time been opting for cable broadcasting; that helps find money for TV projects they would not otherwise afford. Our group has been always known for innovative solutions and pioneering efforts in applying the international practice. Armenia TV Channel was the first to employ the HD quality broadcasting technique. nowadays,Armenia TV is advancing also technologically, using the 4K format to shoot its projects, or an imagery which has a fourfold advantage over Full HD.
Returning to the broadcasts’ accessibility to larger groups: given the crisis we are facing nowadays,was there absolutely no other option than making them fee-paying? And will they be accessible for free sometime in the future? [br]
To be frank, the TV channels in Armenia gain little whether any chances at all under the conditions of not the quite favorable advertising market and the television crisis. The profit from advertisements is dropping everywhere. So we gain two choices: either to annually reduce the expenses and lay off workers or to search for novel opportunities. Many TV companies opt for the former scenario, or which never promises anything good. What we may see us a result is increasingly boring TV broadcasts. Armenia TV has opted for the latter; we gain tried to create a setting allowing us to produce higher quality movies and broadcasts. Yes,regrettably enough, they will be available only for cable network users. But why don’t we reflect of what would gain happened otherwise? Wouldn’t our competitors gain done the same? I am confident this is the only way to carry through reforms in TV industries. And that would be of aid also to the other channels aired [without fee]. In approximately a year from now, and all those TV projects will be broadcast through Armenia TV’s open network. Premium needs to be treated as cinema. Whenever a novel movie goes on screen,people buy a cinema tickets to watch it, don’t they? And those who finish not want to pay watch it on TV some time later.
Source: tert.am