NTV celebrated its 25th anniversary year with a new lineup of TV shows, most of which became hits, an expansion of its information and entertainment broadcasting, as well as an increase in media indicators on weekends and primetime, becoming the only television channel from the “big three” that increased its audience in the most commercially attractive primetime slot (+3.5%). At the same time, NTV kept its position as the third most popular TV channel in Russia, wrapping up 2018 with a share of about 10% among all viewers over the age of 18, and remained the leader among men over the age of 18 with a share of 10.5%.
NTV ranked second in terms of viewership during the fall television season in 2018. Its Sunday analytical program Itogi Nedeli (Weekly Summary) with Irada Zeynalova was one of the main drivers of this success. The project helped the channel to become a leader in its time slot as well as among all analytical programs several times in 2018. In December, Itogi Nedeli was the most popular program among all analytical programs with a share of 14.5% and a rating of 5.5%. The year’s final issue of Itogi Nedeli had a share of 15.3% and a rating of 5.9%, once again becoming the best information and analytical program of the week.
NTV also kept its status as the most popular TV channel in the weekend morning and afternoon time slots during the fall season. This is not only among the audience over the age of 18 (11.6% share), but also among viewers aged 14-44 (10.7%) and 25-54 (12.2%). The channel has 11 lifestyle projects that come out in these time slots: Gotovim s Alekseem Ziminym (Cooking with Alexei Zimin), Glavnaya Doroga (Main Road), Eda Zhivaya i Mertvaya (Food, Dead and Alive), Kvartirnyi Vopros (Housing Dilemma), Edim Doma (Eating at Home), Pervaya Peredacha (First Gear), Chuydo Tekhniki (The Miracle of Technology), Dachniy Otvet (Dacha is the Answer), NashPotrebNadzor (Our Consumer Watch), Kto v Dome Hozyain (Who is the Boss in the House?), and Poedem, Poedim! (Let's go Eat!).
On weekdays, NTV leads in the time slot from 14:00 to 18:15 with a share of 13.2%. During this time, NTV releases its daily daily political talk show Mesto Vstrechi (Meeting Place), the daily news bulletin Segodnya (Today) and the program DNK (DNA).
The primetime lineup of NTV’s weekday series consistently draws the viewers’ attention. Just in the fall, the channel’s new series became the most popular broadcasts of the week and, on five occasions, the best primetime series. The TV season opened with the series Belabol, which reached a viewership share of 15.5%. Then the channel aired the action comedy Dinozavr (Dinosaur) with Andrey Smirnov, whose rating of 6.2% became not only the most popular broadcast of the week with a share of 19.9% among viewers aged 18 and up, but also overtook the first episode of the new season of Golos (The Voice) reality show (5.8%) and the informational program Vremya (Time) (5.8%).
The program Kantselyarskaya Krysa (The Clerical Rat), which had a maximum share of 17.2%, was followed by the action-packed melodrama Skoraya Pomosch (The Ambulance) with Gosha Kutsenko in the lead role (20.7%). Skoraya Pomosh led the primetime slot and twice became the best weekly broadcast during its two weeks on air. The detective thriller Vorona (The Crow) premiered at the end of October. The series, in which Valery Todorovsky and Elizaveta Boyarskaya play the lead roles, got an 18.6% viewership share and Boyarskaya also won the “Best actress” award at the PILOT festival for her role in the production.
To celebrate the anniversary of Russia’s prominent actor, Vladimir Mashkov, NTV released the historical military drama Mednoe Solntse (Copper Sun), whose viewership share reached 15.1%. The third season of the detective TV series Pyos (The Dog) also came out in the fall and twice became the best series of the week during its three weeks on air. Its maximum viewership share was 17.3%.
The second season of the singing show Ty Super! (You are Super!) for children left without parental care remains one of the most popular projects on Russian television. The share of the final episode in the second season was 12.3%, while the performance of its winner, Diana Ankudinova, became the most popular music video and made it into the Top 3 of all YouTube videos in 2018 among the Russian audience, collecting more than 80 million views. In total, the videos from Ty Super! got around 300 million views online. Ty Super! also ranked second in the rating “Show of the Year” in the first Russian online awards for the most popular content Samyi OK, which was carried out by the Odnoklassniki social network. NTV’s talent show got 23% of the vote from the network’s subscribers, losing out only to Golos.
NTV content remains in demand among viewers on the Internet. News, live broadcasts, video on demand, and messages in social networks give the channel more than 350 million contacts with its viewers per month. The viewership of the channel’s own online resources is also growing. NTV has 14.4 million unique users on its website, more than 12 million sessions on its mobile app per month and a total of 4 million app installations. NTV series on the channel’s YouTube page got 1.1 billion views in 2018.
In 2018, NTV was also actively working on expanding its international distribution. As of September, the film series Hozhdenie po Mukam (The Road to Calvary) was made available to 130 million Netflix subscribers in 190 countries around the world, thus becoming the first commercial deal between a Russian television channel and one of the world’s largest streaming services.
NTV series remain popular in all CIS countries. For example, when Kazakhstan’s Eurasia channel showed the action-packed series Nevsky in the fall of 2018, the series got 40% of the viewership share.