Kolomoisky’s media manager complains: market laws prevent the Ukrainization of TV series

Although news and entertainment projects on Ukrainian television have been completely translated into Ukrainian, this has not yet affected TV series, and this spoils the whole picture for Ukrainianizers.

This was stated at a round table in Kyiv by the general director of the 1+1 media group, Alexander Tkachenko, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.

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“Almost all TV channels switched to Ukrainian when it comes to news. A big problem area is TV series. Series that are produced for two countries, Russia and Ukraine, have much greater commercial potential than those that are produced only in Ukrainian. For example, this year we made two series, “School” and “Two Mothers” in Ukrainian. After quotas were introduced, producers came to me and said: “What is this, are we the only green ones?”

There have been no changes regarding the Ukrainian language in TV series - almost all TV series, with rare exceptions, are shown in Russian. And this creates a completely different context in the perception of television as such. One of the three pillars – entertainment projects, news and TV series – continues to be broadcast in Russian. If the situation is as it is now, it will “cement” this process and series will continue to be made in Russian. It will be quite difficult for us, people who are in competition, to compete with the series that air in prime time. This is a completely different burden in terms of returning money,” he said.