The National Media Group unites all the on-air TV channels of the holding into a single on-air television cluster. This strategic decision is aimed at strengthening the holding's leadership position in the TV market. The creation of the cluster will allow for more efficient management of the portfolio of TV channels included in the list of the largest in terms of audience share in the country, as well as achieve additional synergies in terms of cost optimization and technological development prospects. The curator of the terrestrial television cluster will be Vladimir Tyulin, in the role of the First Deputy General Director of NMG. He will also continue to head the Izvestia News Center and the REN TV channel.
Alexander Akopov, who held the positions of Deputy General Director of NMG for Entertainment Broadcasting and General Director of CTC TV channel, decided to leave NMG and focus on production and educational activities. Irina Varlamova, who previously held the position of Deputy General Director of CTC Media for content Management, was appointed acting Director of CTC TV channel.
All changes will take effect on March 1, 2025.
This is the second business cluster created at NMG - the first in 2024 was created by NMG DOC, specializing in the production of documentary films.
Creating a business cluster allows for maximum flexibility and process efficiency while maintaining the core business structure and speeding up the creation of new products.
Svetlana Balanova, CEO of NMG:
"Combining on-air TV channels into a single business cluster while maintaining and developing their individual brands is an important step towards strengthening NMG's leading position in the TV market. We strive to offer our viewers and advertisers the best television products in a wide variety of formats and genres, reaching all possible target audiences. NMG's business is increasingly diversifying, and today, in addition to the on-air television market, we also aim to have an active presence in the information and entertainment market in a broader context. We are grateful to Alexander Akopov and wish him success, and we plan to continue our cooperation with him in both production and educational areas."
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National Media Group is Russia's largest private media holding. NMG manages a diversified portfolio of assets in the production, distribution and monetization of high-quality information and entertainment content in all consumption media.
The holding's key assets include the leaders of the Russian media market: terrestrial TV channels - REN TV, 5TV, CTC, Domashniy, CHE!, CTC Love, CTC Kids; multimedia information center Izvestia (comprising the IZ.RU portal, Izvestia newspaper,
Izvestia TV channel, news services of REN TV and 5TV); newspapers - Sport Express, Delovoy Peterburg. The Group owns a stake in Channel One.
The holding is the owner of the NMG Studio company. In 2019, NMG launched the online service more.tv, and in June 2023 finalized a deal to merge the video services more.tv and Wink in a joint venture with PJSC Rostelecom. In November 2022, the holding announced the creation of a movie distribution company, NMG Kinoprokat. In January 2024, NMG launched NMG DOC, a unified platform for the production and distribution of works in the non-fiction genre. In April 2024, NMG and RDIF agreed to invest in the creation of a joint commercial fund for the development of cinema and animation.