On the third day of NEM Dubrovnik 2025, we caught up with Sangerim Zhakhina, Kanal D’s Sales Manager for CIS, CEE, and Baltics to discuss the company’s perspective on the market, their current highlights, and what makes this year’s edition so valuable for them.
What were your impressions of NEM Dubrovnik 2025?
“The market has been amazing so far, it’s been very active. This region in the Baltics has always been dynamic. From our point of view, what we have observed is that they plan the schedules ahead. It’s a free TV and pay TV dominant market. So for us, it’s actually an advantage because our catalog is very suitable for such TV programming,” Zhakhina said.
“They also do slots like one new title and maybe two classic evergreens, which is also great news for us. We’re trying to offer one evergreen and one of our new titles. It’s also exciting that we’re telling news about the new season, that two of our new titles will come soon, and we will be announcing it closer to September. Maybe at MIPCOM, even. We’re preparing right now. Apart from that, there is also some small VOD demand. What we have seen is that free TV and pay TV have VOD. We can also offer mini-series, rom-coms, they perform very well, for example, in Serbia, from what we’ve heard.”
Being present at NEM Dubrovnik 2025 is also part of a larger strategic move for Kanal D as the team builds new connections in the region.
“It is very important for us to be here as we’re kind of a new team in the region, to meet people face to face and to build this communication. So far, this is the third day and we can see that people are very warm and communicative. We have got a lot of information and insights. So we’re very happy.”
Which titles have you been highlighting at NEM Dubrovnik 2025, and what has been your main focus during the market?
“Our highlight is The Family Burden so far. Because it’s a super classical mother and daughter story, love triangle, past secrets, everything that classical audience love. Like free TV, pay TV stationed viewers would absolutely love it. So this has been our highlight and we have a lot of good feedback that this is suitable. We can also consider The Family Burden as a Cinderella story. A lot of viewers say that they’re looking for some Cinderella stories. So this is a perfect case.”
“Apart from that, some library titles, like we have a great adaptation of Ruthless City. So we have a couple of requests, they want library, they want something that will work well, like well-known. So we’re also offering as an alternative. Broken Promise, which was produced by SIC, it’s a Portuguese version of Ruthless City. So we can create adaptations. It was nominated as the best telenovela in LATAM. So they can consider it as an alternative. Good story, because good quality stories always work. It’s a proven success. So it’s been very interesting. Thank you!”
Click here to access our NEM Dubrovnik 2025 issue.
