ИСТИНА

The digital transformation of traditional broadcasting is of particular interest to media scholars worldwide. In Russia, terrestrial broadcasting that has in recent decades dominated the national media system with large audiences and attracting the major advertisers has been affected by digitalization of the national media industry, the rapid growth of the internet and the shift of young audiences to social media. This has resulted in new tensions and growing uncertainties in the Russian broadcast market forcing broadcasters to reshape traditional strategies under pressures of digitalization. The goal of this research is to reveal the main trends in business model digital transformations of the largest Russian television and radio channels. The authors focus mostly on the current business models being implemented nowadays by the largest broadcasting companies. This study is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of the top management of major Russian broadcast companies. The research procedure of elite interviews has both significant epistemological advantages and limitations (Odendahl, Shaw, 2001). At the empirical level 12 semi-structured face-to-face interviews with top managers of key Russian media were conducted, and among them were 4 representatives of radio companies and 8 managers of television companies. The interviews were conducted between July 3d 2019 and March 4d 2020. The research showed that Russia’s audiovisual media companies are currently going through the initial stage of digital transformation. The transformation process has slowed, because media managers have to make decisions under extremely high market uncertainty resulting from changes in the advertising market and in media regulation. Also, broadcasters continue to view the state as an important source of financial support, especially during the digital switchover in 2009 – 2019. Many broadcast managers consider digitalization and the creation of new business models are inevitable, though companies have still not elaborated holistic online strategies and continue to develop online activities under their own momentum. This study supported the assumption that Russia’s audiovisual companies evaluate the current situation in the media industry as a situation of extremely high uncertainty, which is manifested in the refusal to either forecast the future to invest in it. We’ve managed to formulate several conclusions summing up the main trends within the process of digital transformation among the audiovisual companies in Russia: None of the managers interviewed said that digital projects are not the future, though almost none of them is trying to bring the future closer, relying on the established tradition of Russians’ consumption of terrestrial broadcast radio and TV. This situation has been well described by the institutional theory developed by Lowrey (2011). Despite the recognition of the inevitability of the digital future, companies tend to repeat traditional practices and focus more on their own experience and the actions of competitors, rather than on a system of forecasting or adopting innovative solutions. The desire to work in ad hoc mode focusing on a specific market situation (Horst, Järventie – Thesleff, Baumann, 2019) is also quite clear in the responses of almost all respondents. Extremely low revenues from the ‘digital’ content mean that the terrestrial business model has the status of being a cash cow, which supports freedom-loving, but low-profit digital departments. However, there are practices that involve a shift away from the traditional business model based on the sale of advertising, and a refocusing on a new business model that includes, among other things, payment for content, though none of the respondents mentioned the intensification of work in the traditional broadcasting market as a key strategy, which also means the inevitable erosion of old practices. Thus, the current situation in the broadcasting segment of the Russian media market allows us to identify the initial period of digital transformation, which occurred as long ago as the late 1990s in many foreign media markets. Clearly, the developmental inhibitor in this case is the high level of state control and financial support for audiovisual media in Russia, as well as the undisputed market leadership of a few federal television companies. Both made it possible to have a large financial ‘safety cushion’, which only recently has begun to decrease. This provides a unique opportunity to test modern research tools (for example, dynamic capabilities theory) in a situation of extremely high market uncertainty and the initial period of large-scale transformations in the media market.