CSTB 2012 hosts an International Festival of Pay TV Channels the “World Content Show”

The 6th edition of the “World Content Show”, an international festival of pay TV channels, took place in Moscow as an integral and key element of CSTB 2012 – itself the largest international exhibition for TV and telecommunications in Russia. On this occasion the organisers were delighted to welcome as General Sponsor the Paramount Comedy channel and Gulli as a sponsor.

Every year the World Content Show offers its participants a unique opportunity to display to a wide and critical audience new programs and present new channels to their target audience. This year Mikhail Borzenkov was the show’s moderator who as editor-in-chief of the Stereo & Video magazine and anchor of the “Movie Magic” on the “Kultura” channel brought not only his knowledge of the media but also his well known personality.

Andrey Gromkovsky who heads the Russian version of the Paramount Comedy channel was the first to present his channel’s content to visitors of the World Content Show included were comedy series, movies and cartoons. Mr Gromkovsky believes that the Russian pay TV market is one of the fastest growing markets and that the Russian audience presents an active and demanding consumer of high quality entertaining content. Paramount Comedy is planning to creatively adapt foreign content for the Russian viewers, localize its brand and the content’s design, and to soon start producing content in Russia. The channel is to be launched on pay TV networks in April 2012 and according to Andrey Gromkovsky is going to become one of the leaders in the Russian pay TV market through advertising and PR by paying special attention to what the pay TV leaders are thinking and demanding.

Fox International Channels were presented by Anjela Yakovleva, regional manager for Russia. Fox Life, Fox Crime, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, Baby TV are all successfully developing in Russia as channels that belong to the Fox Life media holding, and they make up 97% of exclusive premiers of the best foreign series, 87% of which hold a priority place compared with broadcast channels.

Fashion One has proved to be the fastest growing channel - in Russia since April 2010. Fashion One’s content is different from that of others by a large number of fashion shows, new, reality shows and programs depicting celebrities and well known stars in their everyday life.

The Director General of “Expert TV”, the first channel for the Russian intellectuals, Firuz Karimov presented content from this business channel that differs from other channels by the personal views of journalists on current events and an “author’s” presentation of content. On this channel the viewer has the opportunity to see well-known newsmen from such magazines as “Expert” and “The Russian Reporter”. The unique features of “Expert TV” are not only business and social and political news but also talk shows, art-house movies and music for the intellectual viewer.

Visitors to the World Content Show will certainly remember the striking performance of the “Digital TV Family” presented by the Channel One as were all those present in the hall glad to participate in an improvised shooting of a talk show whose guests were editors-in-chief and directors of such channels as “Dom Kino”, “Telekafe”, “Muzyka Pervogo” and “Vremya”.

Roman Mironov, PR Director of the TV channels Music Box, Russian Music Box and Humor TV was more than up to the task of “entertaining and providing information”: He invited Sergey Zverev to attend his show and Sergey is truly a Russian star. The showmen were entertaining the audience, whilst informing the guests about the channels they were representing.

Experts representing the news channels France 24, BBC, and Deutsche Welle discussed the question of how to provide more information on current events while not losing impartiality. Deutsche Welle announced a re-launching of a channel which started a complete rebranding process. Additionally, the channel’s geographic coverage has grown and its programmes have become more attractive and dynamic.

Cartoon Networks, a channel for children, whose main content is cartoons, presented a great interactive program to its viewers. Anton Zorkin, anchor of the TV game for kids “Ben 10: A Supercomplex Task”, invited guests from the audience to participate in light-hearted competitions that, for many, recalled their own life when a child.

Nickelodeon – the largest children’s network in the world pays significant attention in Russia to promoting individual cartoon characters from the channel. For example, in Moscow an entire exhibition was devoted to Sponge Bob character organized in association with Natalya Vodyanova’s “Naked Hearts” charity foundation and Beeline Company.

Distribution of the French children’s channels Tiji and Gulli in Russia is the responsibility of Universal Distribution. Tiji is for pre-school children, and its content is mainly cartoons. In Gulli’s audience one will find not only children but their parents, too. Here one might watch new cartoons, series for the family, educational programs about journeys and movies. Gulli is France’s number one family TV programme and its distributors are planning to achieve similar success in Russia.

The “Amedia” channel also displayed its originality, promoting itself as “Your Favourite Series Channel”. Its content comes from a movie company bearing the same name. Representatives from “Amedia” presented a short “soap opera”, telling the audience about the channels content as if in a game.

The “Kinolux” channel managed to create an atmosphere of a real movie house in the conference hall. Before running a presentation of the channel whose content mainly consists of blockbusters, there appeared young promo girls giving popcorn to the audience.

The “NKS-Media” company, following suit and showing its content in an interactive mode, advertised its channels in a very light and smart way. The channels were “Mother and Child”, “24 Techno”, “24 Doc”, “Real Horror TV”, “Real Funny TV”, “Theme Park” and “Top Secret”, With each thematic channel being innovatively represented by an interesting and appropriate character personality.

Global Star TV personnel described their channel as real macho TV, stressing that men were striving to an ideal of some kind.

The World Content Show festival has once again presented the world of pay TV in its variety, having achieved its main tasks of helping the viewer select channels for a “personal” TV space and of assisting pay TV operators in choosing successful business “instruments”, i.e., TV channels that were being presented.

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