How Ukraine conflict resurrected Turkish TV series on Russian platforms

The West’s loss is Türkiye’s gain. As Western TV series begin to disappear from Russian streaming services following the assault on Ukraine, Turkish and South Korean serials have become the new, go-to source of entertainment for those who need their daily web fix, RBC has reported quoting the TelecomDaily agency.

Data from Russian streaming services tell the story—the number of Turkish series on IVI (ivi.ru) has increased from 12 to 23; on video-on-demand platform Kinopoisk from 12 to 21; on pay-TV Wink from 9 to 16; and on Kion TV (kion.ru)  from 9 to 18. 

Wink has also increased purchase of Indian movies by 10 percent,  year-on-year, to 137. The number of Korean series also increased: the number of them on IVI in Q2 increased 1.4-fold year-on-year to 260. 

On Okko, the number of Korean series increased from 178 to 246, and on Kinopoisk by 25 percent to 198, and purchases of Korean series increased the most on Wink (1.6 times, to 180) and Premier (2.3 times, to 61).

Although viewers’ interest in these products is growing, according to the agency, Korean, Turkish and Indian series remain niche content. 

Korean series are in the top 10 on most sites with a share of 1-1.6 percent, while Turkish and Indian series make up less than 0.4 percent. 

But US web series and films continue to be the most-watched till now on Russian streaming services with 29-34 percent viewership, followed by Russian content with 17-24 percent, and British shows with 9-11 percent viewership. At the same time, the share of fans for Russia's national content is also consistently expanding, Vyacheslav Popov, the head of nonlinear content procurement at Wink, told RBC. His service has increased purchases of Indian and Turkish serials and is also in talks with producers in Iran. 

Mikhail Klochkov, programme director of the video service Start, also spoke about the audience's interest in Korean and Turkish series, though the platform mainly focuses on its own production and Russian films.

In early June, it was announced that Russian cinemas would start showing the first episodes of the national series, Dva Kholma (Two Hills).  The film version of the series about the world of a victorious matriarchy from video service Start will be shown on the big screen. This is a new format for the distribution of original content, said the general producer of the studio, Yellow, Black & White, Eduard Iloyan, who was involved in producing the project.

Shortly after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Brazilian telecommunications holding Globo and many distributors of Hollywood films decided to pull out of Russian cinema. 

Analysts warned that because of this, Russians might lose the opportunity to watch Brazilian serials and American blockbusters.