TV to either meet present-day requirements or suffer an irreversible defeat – Armen Arzumanyan

A year ago, Pan Armenian media group and the Ucom telecommunication company launched strategic cooperation. Armenia TV created six additional TV channels for Ucom clients. The company’s new initiative is four new TV channels launched on October 31, which promise a breakthrough.

For comments on the new TV­ projects, innovative motivations and the challenges and future of TV, Tert.am talked to Armen Arzumanyan, Executive Director of the Pan Armenian media group.

Mr Arzumanyan, the number of Internet users is increasing along with technical progress, at the expense of TV viewers. What threat does this trend pose to the future of television, what are the challenges facing the TV companies forming Pan Armenian media group, and what steps are being made to accomplish the present-day tasks.

We are living in an age of technological breakthroughs. Traditional television is actually yielding its positions day by day. TV viewers of the new age have changed their tastes – to meet the present-day requirements as soon as possible or to suffer an irreversible defeat to the Internet and leave. One of the stylish phrases now is ‘I do not watch TV.’ But, I fact, we watch TV more often than we think we do. But we actually see the same TV products by means of Youtube and Facebook. And your question will be about what TV companies’ concern is if nothing poses a threat to the popularity of their “products.” But the reality is that, while you watched a TV program or a film, with commercial inserts, which brought incomes to TV companies, whereas now that we can watch cable TV, without any commercial inserts, watch the same TV broadcast on Facebook or Youtube, in which case a TV company does not get the money for the broadcast sold to you.

The transformations are taking place throughout the world and TV companies are on the way of sweeping reforms.

Telecommunication companies are facing similar reforms. Traditional phone calls are rapidly decreasing throughout the world. People more often prefer WhatsApp, Skype, Facetime, Viber. All the operators are using almost identical technical means of service. On the other hand, extensive dissemination of Internet is nearing completion, and telecommunication companies are coming to realize that an age of competition with new service has come.

In this situation TV and telecommunication companies are just ‘doomed’ to cooperate. The two fields are undergoing integration and interaction.

Netflix and Amazon are turning from ordinary Internet pages into media and telecommunication giants. Other telecommunication giants are closely cooperating with TV companies. When the HBO TV company launched its major project, it did its best for it to be as broadly available on Internet as possible. As a result, its products are settling all the possible records both on the air and on the Internet.

We too made this step by launching cooperation with the leading telecommunication company Ucom. And we intend to provide high-quality content to the clients. And we can now say that the Armenia Premium TV channel, which is an ad-free version of Armenia TV, which shows most of broadcasts and films a day before, is the leader of the Ucom network. Our other channels are intended for different age, social, education cultural groups and are highly popular, which suggests we are on the right way.

The new initiative by Ucom and PanArmenian Media Group – the TV projects launched on October 31 - are being widely discussed. So despite the talks on cutting the budget, we are planning to air simultaneously several impressive projects. That’s at least what the advertisement said.

A year after the launch of the TV channels’ family in collaboration with Ucom, we decided to make a step forward. Four new TV projects will be on air starting from October 31. They will be broadcast only by Armenia Premium. So starting from that day, our quality product will go on air on Armenia Premium to be available only to subscribers of Ucom.

So are the new projects designed for a limited number of viewers given that a large part of population who are not Ucom subscribers will not be consumers of the media product? What about those people?

And what about those who do not have access, let’s say, to Discovery Channel? Many of the world’s leading TV channels and broadcasters have for a long time been opting for cable broadcasting; that helps find money for TV projects they would not otherwise afford. Our group has been always known for innovative solutions and pioneering efforts in applying the international practice. Armenia TV Channel was the first to employ the HD quality broadcasting technique. Today, Armenia TV is advancing also technologically, using the 4K format to shoot its projects, or an imagery which has a fourfold advantage over Full HD.

Returning to the broadcasts’ accessibility to larger groups: given the crisis we are facing today, was there absolutely no other option than making them fee-paying? And will they be accessible for free sometime in the future?

To be frank, the TV channels in Armenia have little if any chances at all under the conditions of not the quite favorable advertising market and the television crisis. The profit from advertisements is dropping everywhere. So we have two choices: either to annually reduce the expenses and lay off workers or to search for new opportunities. Many TV companies opt for the former scenario, which never promises anything good. What we may see as a result is increasingly boring TV broadcasts. Armenia TV has opted for the latter; we have tried to create a setting allowing us to produce higher quality movies and broadcasts. Yes, regrettably enough, they will be available only for cable network users. But why don’t we think of what would have happened otherwise? Wouldn’t our competitors have done the same? I am confident this is the only way to carry through reforms in TV industries. And that would be of help also to the other channels aired [without fee]. In about a year from now, all those TV projects will be broadcast through Armenia TV’s open network. Premium needs to be treated as cinema. Whenever a new movie goes on screen, people buy a cinema tickets to watch it, don’t they? And those who do not want to pay watch it on TV some time later.