Multimedia business platform Commersant is working to develop integrated internet-business television this year, which will offer new programmes and thematic rubrics.
“We will be offering dynamic content, a whole host of new faces and alternative opinions. Of course, business and the economy will remain the prioritised directions of the TV content,” said Goga Samushia, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Media Holding Commersant.
“Our radio coverage will be fully integrated with the TV video stream and will be updated with new programmes and thematic rubrics. The format of the news programmes, which traditionally provide business updates three times per hour, will remain unchanged,” he added.
Commersant is also continuing to expand throughout Georgia, covering more territories of the country with time.
Samushia said that the next region where Commersant will be broadcasting is Georgia’s wine-growing region of Kakheti.
“Our goal is for Radio Commersant to cover the whole of Georgia, especially those areas where business activities are highest,” said Samushia.
As of today, besides in the capital Tbilisi, people can listen to Radio Commersant throughout the whole of the Adjara region (FM 95.3), including the Black Sea resort city of Batumi, in Georgia’s third largest city – Kutaisi (FM 93.9), and in Zugdidi, capital city of the Samegrelo region (FM 99.1).
Furthermore, Commersant is working on developing multimedia content. This includes video stories and topics that will be posted on Commersant’s social networks of Facebook and its YouTube channel.
“Developing multimedia content is an ongoing process at Commersant and we are continuing to work on this direction this year as well. Our video content is already available on several social media platforms. We are also completing work on a mobile application,” Samushia said.
There are plans for a mobile application to be created, making it even more comfortable and convenient for people to access news from the media outlet.
“Taking into account the nature of modern lifestyles, we see that people have less and less time. It is difficult to always grab the full attention of readers with an online format. No matter how interesting or useful the information you give them is, the problem is that they simply do not have enough time to digest all of it,” Samushia said.
“Therefore we decided to let them choose their own time to access the information, and are going to add convenient features such as the functions of pause and rewind. These features will be applied to our audio as well as video sections of the website,” he added.
Commersant started its activities on the Georgian market with a radio station that opened in August 2008. Since then the radio has gained popularity and recognition among Georgian listeners and the time has now come for its further development.
Q. By how much did the number of radio Commersant listeners increase in 2018?
A. Due to current business activity in the country, the audience interested in business and economic-related content is increasing dynamically.
The number of our audience members increased by about 20 percent in 2018-2019 compared to 2017.
Q. Also, how many visitors does commersant.ge have, and which topic do they find the most interesting?
A. About 10,000-12,000 unique visitors visit the Commersant portal every day. All of the topics offered in our different rubrics are equally interesting to visitors. However, it is worth mentioning that readers are mostly attracted to stories that are about positive developments in the economy, business or technology sectors. There is always demand for positive news from society.
Q. Commersant is a partner of local business awards ceremony Golden Brand. What is your impression of this year’s awards ceremony and how would you assess your cooperation with Golden Brand?
A. This is the third year already that we have been cooperating with Global Idea and The FINANCIAL. And I think that this cooperation has been very successful.
This year’s awards ceremony was, as usual, very enjoyable and interesting. Business awards ceremonies such as Golden Brand are very important for businesses. They increase awareness of the businesses themselves and create an additional stimulus for implementing new marketing ideas and PR activities.
Commersant always stands alongside business, because, as a business media portal, business-related projects have always been of interest to us.
We are glad and proud to be the partner of such an influential business awards ceremony. To summarise, I would like to end this interview with the traditional slogan: ‘More Georgian brands for the Georgian Market’.
Discussion about this post