The head of News Media Holding (which includes the Telegram channels Mash and Shot and the Life portal), Maxim Iksanov, gave a long interview to RBC, where he talked about the work of his media services and shared his opinion on what is a possible alternative for transferring Telegram business in case of closure.
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For News Media Holding, Telegram is today the main source of financial income, as the director of the media holding company told RBC, and “I definitely would not like Telegram to cease to exist, because there are too many things tied to it.”
But after the arrest of Pavel Durov in France, thoughts about the possible blocking of the messenger regularly come to mind. Let us remember that the creator of Telegram was arrested on August 24 at Le Bourget airport in Paris. It later turned out that there were 12 charges in his case. Now Durov is under judicial supervision, which is not limited in time.
If the Messenger is closed or blocked, the only alternative in terms of functionality and content monetization capacity will be for News Media Holding of the VK ecosystem, where the holding’s channels are already represented.
“Mash has 2 million subscribers there, Life has more than 2 million. This is a kind of backup,” Iksanov clarifies. The option with Rutube is not even considered: “it takes us between four and five hours to upload the video alone.”
Previously, many of News Media Holding’s video projects were developed on YouTube. The slowdown of the service, monetization problems and the blocking by the platform of several channels of the holding company with an audience of millions made YouTube’s business ineffective.
Many bloggers and media companies have faced a similar problem. Now Iksanov has redirected the promotion of video content to VK, but so far this “does not provide monetization comparable to YouTube.”
The businessman, however, considers it a matter of time and highlights the ease of use and the growing audience of the platform. And although some of the projects created specifically for YouTube had to be closed completely, Iksanov sees positive aspects in this:
“Any crisis situation is very good for the media. They force you to get rid of unnecessary fat, which was previously done just for fun. We closed everything that did not provide monetization.”
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
