Comedy Club is not a joke: how the writers went to competitors

Tele-holdings continue to attract staff from each other. In September, screenwriters belonging to Gazprom-Media Comedy Club moved to work at CTC Media. Earlier STS stars were the stars of TNT Sergey Svetlakov and Alexander Nezlobin.
27.09.2018
RBC
Origin source
The group of authors of the Comedy Club program, which goes on TNT channel (part of Gazprom-Media), will create humorous content for the CTC Media holding, the manager of CTC, Domashniy, Che, CTC Love and CTC Kids. This was reported to RBC by a source on the media market and confirmed by the general producer of the STS channel Anton Fedotov.

The team led by Radion Bigulaeva began work on September 19, Fedotov said. Bigulaev is one of the authors of the Comedy Club, Garik Martirosyan, art director and "resident" of the Comedy Club, told in an interview to journalist Yuri Dudyu. Prior to joining Comedy in 2013, Bigulaev was the artistic director of the Vladikavkaz KVN team “Pyramid”. “The group [Comedy Club], despite rumors that are creeping across the country, is not billions, but several people. They can be counted on the fingers, ”Martirosyan said then.

The author’s group led by Bigulayev includes, in particular, screenwriters Timur Aristanbaev, Sergey Kashnikov, Dmitry Dobrolyubov, Artem Kirsanov, Alexey Leonov and Alexander Ivanchenko. In this lineup they collaborated with the Comedy Club for the last three years, mostly writing jokes for residents, RBC explained Radion Bigulaev.

The author group Bigulaev left the project, the press service of the Comedy Club reported. According to her, this group had the same duties as all the others: generating ideas for numbers, writing scripts, participating in brainstorming sessions and working “in conjunction with a creative producer and artists”. More than 250 authors work on the projects of Comedy Club Production, explains the representative of the Comedy Club, emphasizing that the main role in the creative process is played by creative producer Alexey Lyaporov.

The team of Bigulayev will mainly work on projects for the CTC channel, the first of which will be the restart of the comic show “Thank God, you have come!”, Said Fedotov.

This show went on STS in 2006–2010. His return on the air was announced in July. To restart, as stated by "STS Media", will attract popular comedians Sergey Svetlakov and Alexander Nezlobin. Previously, they collaborated with the TNT television channel, but since July they moved to CTC Media.

Gazprom-Media starts

In October last year, the largest Russian teleholdings agreed not to lure each other shots, as well as shows and TV shows, wrote Vedomosti, citing its own sources. The reason for the discussion was the launch of the new federal channel Gazprom-Media Super. The general producers of Yellow, Black & White, Eduard Iloyan, Vitaly Shlyappo, Aleksey Trotsyuk and Denis Zhalinsky took part in it. Prior to this, the studio was the main producer of content for the STS channel: the TV series “Kitchen”, “Hotel Eleon”, the show “Six Frames”, etc.

At the end of last year, the founders of YBW went to work at Gazprom-Media. It was assumed that the basis of the new channel would be the Yellow, Black & White library, however, CTC Media managed to retain the rights to the series that aired on its channels.

The main asset of the television production is “these are people, a team of like-minded people, their brains,” said Edward Iloyan, one of the founders of Yellow, Black & White, in an interview with RBC. With him agrees general director of the "World Russian Studios" Yuri Sapronov. He explains: the scriptwriters are an important part of the creative team, and each author or scriptwriter group, as a rule, has its own genre specialization: someone writes comedies, someone - dramas, someone - action games. The transition of scenario groups working in the comedy genre, from a project to a project, indicates a shortage of such specialists in the market, Sapronov stated.

The authors for television are as important as the fields for Rosneft, said producer Igor Mishin. However, film and television production have, according to Mishin, some differences: in the first case, the author can actually be an independent creative unit, in the second - he is part of a creative team. The transfer of such a creative group as the “CTC Media” is a strong acquisition for the channel, says Mishin. But in order for the project to really shoot, we also need creative producers who surpass the writers in their status and competence, Mishin concluded.

The Comedy Club project has been on TNT since April 2005. A year after the start of the television show, Russian Forbes estimated its revenues at $ 3.5 million, placing 50 richest domestic stars in the ninth place in its rating (not only celebrities' incomes, but also public interest). Participants of this rating later became the "residents" of the Comedy Club Garik Martirosyan, Semyon Slepakov, Pavel Volya. The latter occupies the 46th line of last year’s Forbes ranking. According to the publication, in the period from June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017, he earned $ 1.2 million.

In 2011, Gazprom-Media bought for 10.3 billion rubles. (approximately $ 327 million at the then rate) 75% of the manufacturer Comedy Club. At the end of 2017, the holding increased its stake to 100%.

Since the launch, Comedy Club largely ensures the success of TNT. For example, last year in the target audience of TNT - the audience of 14–44 years old - the average share of all the Comedy Club releases, including replays and non-standard projects (The best of, Jurmala music, etc.) was equal, according to Mediascope, 11.6 %. In other words, the program was watched by 11.6% of all Russians of the specified age, who at that time had a TV set turned on. In January — August of this year, this indicator was equal to 10.4%. The average daily share of the target audience for the whole TNT channel was 10.6%, in January-August this year it was 9.9%, respectively.

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