At the briefing held on April 2 the members of the Ukrainian Telecommunications Chamber Association (UTCA) made public the main ways out of the crisis for television industry, like transiting to contracts in national currency and reasonable legislative regulation. Certain financial investment is supposed to be facilitated by broadcasting of erotic channels.
The national currency’s fall up-edged the contracts in dollars with foreign channels. The royalty in hryvnyas reached astronomical amounts impracticable for Ukrainian operators and customers, as the revenues both of people and companies had significantly decreased.
Ivan Shestakov from Megogo said that it was managed to agree with a lot of rights holders (TV channels and film companies) as for discounts and to renegotiate contracts under a dynamic binding to a dollar rate. He reminded that the rights holders’ intransigence in VOD content issues already cultivated pirates in their day. And in the current situation compromises are still more important.
Pyotr Konov from Viasat believes that the crisis can become an occasion to consolidate the industry.
Not all companies, however, made concessions, so Stanislav Yasinevich from the Telecom Operators Union for Odessa and Odessa Region informed that the agreement failed with Discovery, Eurosport and MGU (Media Group Ukraine).
Sergey Boyko form VOLIA confirms that the crisis led to the extension of gray area, and actually there are no more than 3 million legal subscribers. For the providers’ coming out of the shadow it’s required to reduce the licence price of UAH 12 million, being impracticable now for the most of operators, as well as to grant it under the technological neutrality conditions. Konstantin Gritsak from UTCA added that the Association had already presented prepared amendments to the legislation and published indicative prices for services, etc.
The crisis made them remember one source of income like adult channels. We shall recall that erotic channels’ broadcasting was prohibited by the National Commission for Moral Protection, but this authority was liquidated on February 10, 2015.
Sergey Boyko considers that broadcasting of erotic channels will allow increasing market revenues by 2,5%. Under sustainable conditions the adult content’s appearance anticipated 7% of new subscribers, and actually it is forecasted 5% at most. Stanislav Yasinevich didn’t agree, however, with such forecasts, estimating them too optimistic.
Konstantin Gritsak pointes out that the industry is ready for self-regulating (by the way, this is the first selfregulation example on the Ukrainian market) and limiting the access to adult content by time or by coding. There were elaborated a number of items that would protect children from undesired information: ban on such content advertising, awareness rising, ban on using explicit elements while informing.
