The General Director of NMG pointed to the key role of television in delivering information

Television remains a key element of the hybrid media environment, playing a major role in the transmission of information and mass content. This was announced on April 9 by Svetlana Balanova, CEO of the National Media Group (NMG).

According to her, there is currently a profound transformation of the media environment, in which there are no longer separate areas such as cinema, television and radio. At the same time, television plays one of the most important roles in this process.

"Today we are witnessing a huge evolution of the media environment: there is no longer a separate cinema, television, radio and other areas. There is a single hybrid media environment in which people come for two things: information and recreation. <...> Television, due to its coverage and the possibility of long—term viewing, is the main carrier frequency for communicating meanings and information to the masses," Balanova said in an interview with RBC.

She noted that the Internet cannot exist in isolation from television. There is a single hybrid media environment in which television is the main way to convey information, she added.

"If you want to convey any information about national meanings or federal advertising messages, it should be a hybrid involving television...> The mix of consumption may be different, but television still remains a mass carrier frequency for everyone. Then you can expand it through the Internet, outdoor advertising, and so on," said the CEO of NMG.

Citing the example of the once popular TV series "Daddy's Daughters" in Russia, Balanova drew attention to the fact that projects produced for television continue to attract a mass audience both on the air and on the Internet. At the same time, content created exclusively for online platforms, unlike television projects, often remains niche and limited in scope.

"When we release the series Daddy's Daughters, it is first watched by 30 million people on CTC, and then by millions more in online cinemas. There is a hypothesis that some other product needs to be produced for online cinemas. But if we are talking about classic formats — TV series, movies, some shows, then projects that were produced for television still receive massive viewing on the Internet. They were originally made according to the law of the mass genre. And what is produced only for online platforms, most often still has a certain niche and limitation in terms of the audience it falls into," Balanova said.

In December last year, Alexander Vorontsov, a leading customer support sector manager for the Mediascope TV segment, said that more than 60% of the Russian population turn on their TV every day on average, and television is the most comprehensive media in the country. According to him, the TV viewing time is growing quite significantly and is growing along with the average age of the viewer. The average TV viewing time in Russia is 3 hours and 24 minutes, the expert added.