The FINANCIAL — Georgian business news outlet Commersant is expanding in Georgia, covering more territories of the country.
By the end of the year 2018 Radio Commersant will be available in Georgia’s third largest city – Kutaisi (FM 93.9), and in Zugdidi, capital city of the Samegrelo region (FM 99.1).
“Our goal is for Radio Commersant to cover the whole of Georgia and especially those areas where business activities are higher,” said the Director of Commersant, Goga 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.
“Previously, as business activities were mostly developing in the capital city Tbilisi, our focus was also on Tbilisi. But now we see that businesses are developing in various regions of Georgia and it is time for our radio to cover the regions as well, to let local people know what the latest news is in their specific areas,” Samushia said.
“Business-related information is mostly available in Tbilisi. Information such as how to access state programmes; state services; what the ongoing processes within business associations are; what initiatives the non-governmental sector has going on – such information which is necessary for businesses is unfortunately unavailable in the regions. We will therefore do our best to give them access to such information,” he added.
Meanwhile, Commersant is developing a multi-functional media platform where all news about business will be available in one space.
Radio Commersant, Commersant.ge and its Russian-language newspaper – all three directions of the Holding will be united in one space, a website which will enable visitors to catch up with the latest business stories covered in a professional way.
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.
“Commersant is taking a giant step towards a new phase of development. We are rebranding our radio and reinforcing it technically. We are increasing the reach of Radio Commersant so its voice will cover almost the whole country,” Samushia said.
“We are also rebranding our website which doesn’t only entail visual changes but includes its functional development as well. We are creating a multi-functional media platform which will unite our radio, our website and our Russian-language newspaper. Through this multi-functional media platform business information will be more accessible to all,” he added.
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. Also, content will be put on business-portal Commersant, which is a prerequisite for the development of integrated internet-business television in the near future,” Samushia said.
Furthermore, Commersant is working on a mobile application to make it more comfortable and convenient for people to access news from the media outlet.
More importantly, the multi-functional online platform that will be available to society from this September will have the available functions of pause and rewind for videos or radio streams.
“Taking into account 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, the problem is that they simply do not have enough time to follow all the information,” Samushia said.
“So we decided to let them choose their own time to get 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. We think that all of these works will be completed by September 2017,” he added.
Commersant is a partner of local business awards ceremony Golden Brand. Samushia says that Commersant always stands where the business is.
“As a business media portal, business-related projects have always been interesting to us. Golden Brand is a very useful and much needed project for Georgian business. Golden Brand was named a brand itself, which establishes new standards and encourages other companies to implement successful activities. The awards ceremony was very high quality and prestigious. We are glad and proud to be the partner of such an influential business awards ceremony,” Samushia said.
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