Julia Matiash, the Head of sales of TV Channel “Russia”: - Has the crisis finished? I would say the fright has gone. Everybody understood, in order to retain the same positions it was necessary to work in new circumstances, to seek for new approaches, to make more efforts and to apply more imagination.

Julia Matiash, the Head of sales of TV Channel “Russia”:
- Has the crisis finished? I would say the fright has gone. Everybody understood, in order to retain the same positions it was necessary to work in new circumstances, to seek for new approaches, to make more efforts and to apply more imagination. Of course, there are some partners that have suffered more than others, for instance Greece or the Baltic states. However, the strategy of VGTRK (Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company) concerning the content distribution is not based on instantaneous trends. We try to support our partners and help them to overcome a difficult period of time.

Television has been living through the turning point that is partially related to the global economic crisis but first of all connected with the switch to digital broadcasting and hence, the increase in the number of diverse TV Channels. On the one hand, it leads to the necessity of producing more content. On the other hand, universal channels that are meant for mainstream audience have to introduce new programs more assiduously and the new programs should be able to face the audience challenge.

According to the information provided by the organizers I know that the Russian delegation was record-breaking this year. First of all, this fact points out that our colleagues are in an active search for new ideas. As for the companies promoting Russian programs to the world content market, their staff was traditional without any new players.

This year VGTRK came up with a united and renewed booth that represented not only the programs by TV Channel “Russia1” but also the programs produced by “Culture” and “Bibigon”. The style of our design has been changed due to the introduction of a new logotype visualization for the holding TV Channels. The new logotypes looked wonderful and modernized the general perception of our booth. The market has been very active for us. It turned out to be even more successful then we could expect. As before, we focused mainly on the specially selected documentaries, our new film Kandahar and long-running series “The Mistress of Taiga”. Within the next few months we will find out if our priorities are correct. However, we have already signed some serious deals in such difficult territories as France, Japan, Poland, China, and Germany. Moreover, some of the deals were signed with our partners right at the market.