Dear colleagues!
Our team has prepared an opportunity for You to demonstrate the annual review for 2022, which summarizes the main changes in TV viewing for IPTV/OTT over the past year.
Closing of the holding SCM
On July 21, the National Council canceled the television licenses of "Media Group Ukraine", thereby putting an end to Rynat Akhmetov's decision to withdraw the investment company SCM from the media business.
The holding "Media Group Ukraine" united the TV channels "Ukraine", "Ukraine 24", NLO TV, Indigo TV, "Football 1/2/3", Ukraine 1/ Ukraine 2 and NLO TV 1/NLO TV 2, "Donbas ", "34 TV channel" and "Sigma".
Also among the assets are satellite broadcasting operator Xtra TV, the OTT platform OLL.TV, production companies "Tele O" and "Dopomozhemo TV", "Novynna Grupa Ukraina", multimedia platform Today - television news "Segodnya", website Segodnya.ua. And also the cross-platform Vogue.UA project.
According to our data, the OLL.TV OTT platform had more than 100,000 subscribers, and after the closure of this service, some subscribers switched to other platforms (mainly Megogo and Kyivstar TV), and a certain part left OTT altogether.
Why did the audience spend less time by the watching TV?
At the first stage, during March-April, the migration of population had the biggest impact on TV viewing - a significant part of Ukrainians simply did not have time enough to watch TV against the backdrop of more important issues.Should not also forget about the occupation of a large part of Ukraine territory bringing problems with telecommunications in these territories. All this was reflected in the decline of average coverage and time spent per day.
At the beginning of war media groups launching the number of channels with "Single News" marathon essentially turninig them into one channel, large in terms of coverage, but unified in terms of content. However, IPTV/OTT viewers by default have access to the Internet, so having the opportunity to receive current information much faster than on TV. So it is quite logical that interest in the marathon began to gradually decrease, which was reflected in the fall of Ats. It is likely that Ats could have fallen even more, but almost all IPTV/OTT service providers have made watching the channels broadcasting the Single News marathon free, thereby slowing down the audience drain somewhat.
Also, one should not forget about the drop in incomes of the population, due to which part of the audience can no longer afford to pay for extended packages of providers' channels.
Power outages due to Russian missile terror also affected the average viewing time - only in November (compared to October), it has decreased by 12
minutes.
Conclusion - the launch of the "Edyny Novyni" marathon greatly reduced the indicators of the channels broadcastingit. The interest of the audience shifted to other, non-military content. However, it should not be forgotten that all these changes are taking place against the background of a decrease in total television viewing and average viewing time. That is, in 2022, IPTV/OTT viewers will reduce the time of traditional television viewing, they instead will spend more time on the Internet (messengers, social network platorms), where information is provided much more quickly. And quite a large part of the audience uses IPTV/OTT to consume entertainment content.
The final distribution of viewers attention by channel groups in 2022 looks like this:
What genres did the audience prefer in 2022?
We tracked how the viewing share of channels by the same topic changed during the year and came to quite interesting conclusions.
The share of the general viewing channel group (which mainly consists of the media group's top broadcast channels) fell by more than 20% during the March-May period from March, and continued to decline until July 2022. Which is another confirmation of our thesis about the decline of interest in the "Edyny Novyni" telemarathon. True since the end of spring, some channels of media groups have withdrawn from the broadcast of the marathon, so as of December, the group of channels for general viewing includes both channels with a unified broadcast of the marathon, as well as those that show their own content. However, the share of the group is still at a rather low level, compared to pre-war times.
An interesting phenomenon is the almost two-fold increase in the viewing share of movie channels. An analogy with the times of the Great Depression in the United States immediately comes to mind, when people visited cinemas and dance floors en masse, trying to distract themselves from the severe economic hardship. However, since mid-autumn, there has been a noticeable decrease in the viewing share of movie channels, and an increase in the share of the entertainment channels group (where are also channels of media groups that have moved away from the broadcast of the "Edyny Novyvy" marathon). Also, the viewing shares of informative channels groups and TV series channels have increased. It can be assumed a certain audience of viewers is looking for a means of emotional release, trying to distract themselves from the news about the war.
News channel viewers behaved quite interestingly. The share of the news channels group reached the highest rate in March 2022, but it began to show a reduction already in April. And even after the media group Ukraine (and the top rated news channel Ukraine 24) stopped broadcasting in the summer, interest in news channels continued to decline. The conclusion is obvious - the airwaves are oversaturated with the news channels, since in addition to traditional news broadcasters (Channel 24, Pryamy, Channel 5, Espresso, etc.), most of the media groups’ channels with "Edyny Marathon" also broadcast in this niche.
Finally, we would like to wish all of us the fastest victory in 2023. The telecommunications market, which is currently experiencing the most difficult times, of rapid recovery and growth.
Glory to Ukraine!
