Starlight Media goes OTT to shine more brightly in Ukraine
Starlight Media’s new chief content officer Mariia Kostina is strengthening ties with Ukraine’s OTT platforms to overcome power outages and achieve better distribution and marketing of its content and channels.

Starlight Media’s chief content officer Mariia Kostina
Developing partnerships with OTT platforms is a key element in the Ukrainian media group Starlight Media’s strategy. Indeed, this is the reason it created the new position of chief content officer in July this year and appointed to the role Mariia Kostina, previously its head of acquisitions.
According to Kostina, there are three major platforms – Megogo, Kyivstar and Sweet TV – in the Eastern European country and Starlight Media’s work with them was previously spread across different departments of its business.
These included marketing, the distribution of premium channels and sale of VoD content, “because the OTT segment is growing globally and this trend is even more pronounced in Ukraine due to blackouts and the need for viewing, as well as infrastructure challenges.”
Now, however, Starlight Media is moving to a “centralised and systematic approach” with Kostina seeing her job as consolidating this and devising a strategy that will work. In her view, OTT platforms understand what the viewer wants and are therefore creating FAST channels, playlists and separate VoD content.
There is also the important issue of marketing, Kostina says. “When you show your subscriber what to watch they usually do so. It’s really important to give them the opportunity to watch our content.”
Kostina has experience of working with OTT platforms – she was previously the content acquisition manager at Megogo from August 2016 until March 2023 – and now a media company. “This helps me understand both,” she says.
In her new role, Kostina believes she is “striving to establish a new fair broader model of interaction with OTT platforms,” adding that “we are working on high quality distribution and marketing of our leading channels, but also new channels and partnerships in production.”

Love & Flame is produced in cooperation with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine
Kostina cites the example of Love & Flame, a 16-episode melodrama currently being produced by the Starlight Media-owned channel STB in cooperation with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and Megogo. The show is dedicated to Ukrainian emergency workers risking their lives every day during the war with Russia.
She also envisages such cooperation with OTT platforms in the future as it is expensive to create content. Furthermore, she says that although the market is served by three such platforms, Starlight Media is nevertheless thinking about launching its own streaming service.
Kostina adds that Starlight Media currently operates three of the most popular channels in the country, namely Novy Channel, STB and ICTV2. It also has a portfolio of thematic channels including music-based M1 and M2, Tviy Serial (aka Your Serial), which shows mostly Ukrainian series, and OCE, offering both Ukrainian content, shows from independent studios and leading broadcasters such as the BBC.
However, “we cannot rely on just one or two sources of content and so we also run smaller niche channels. At Starlight Media we buy, we produce, we coproduce a lot of different titles throughout the year to fill the schedules of a lot of channels.”
As a result, she continues: “We buy foreign and local feature films from the biggest international studios and smaller local producers. We produce our own regional shows and dub many well-known foreign formats to suit the taste of different viewers.”
In terms of numbers, Kostina says that Novy Channel has eight to10 premier shows and series per year, with half of these based on acquired formats. Meanwhile, STB has 18, with only four to six being foreign formats, and ICTV2 has between 11 and 13 premieres per year, and only one or two are format-based products.

In Her Car has been sold around the world
She adds: “We also have a good balance between scripted and unscripted shows, with 15-17 scripted series and around 20-22 non-scripted titles. In terms of amount, there are 300 hours of premiere series per year against 450 hours premiere non-scripted shows.”
According to Kostina, acquired movies are most visible on Novy Channel and account for 70% of its schedule. Aside from those obtained from such major studios as NBCUniversal, Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, Sony, Paramount, Lionsgate, MGM and Fremantle, they include several Ukrainian titles including the comedy movie Luxembourg Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the most popular series on Novy Channel include House of Happiness, The Head and The Connection, produced by Starlight Production.
ICTV2, on the other hand, allocates 40% of its schedule to international films, again from the same major studios, as well as independent studios and local titles, while STB is a female-oriented channel showing mostly series, 70% of which are produced in Ukraine.
Kostina adds that in the case of STB, the channel features acquired formats rather than Starlight Media’s own productions. These include the local adaptation of the Warner Bros International Television dating format The Bachelor, which began airing in 2011 and is returning for a new season this autumn.
Meanwhile, ICTV2 airs Sony Pictures’ gameshow Who Wants to be a Millionaire, while audiences can view ITV’s Battle of the Sexes on Novy Channel. “We’re really grateful to our partners that they sell us these formats because they’re really popular in Ukraine,” says Kostina.
Other popular shows include the Ukrainian produced comedy-based Dizel Show on ICTV2 and The Floor (Talpa Studios), Family Feud (Fremantle), Who Knew? (Fremantle) and Crack Them Up (Kvartal 95) on Novy Channel. Meanwhile, Master Chef (Banijay), Mum of the Week (Can’t Stop Media) and Starlight Media’s own production Daddy’s House appear on STB.

Ukrainian comedy movie Luxembourg Luxembourg
Starlight Media, in fact, has a large in-house production company named Starlight Production and makes most of its non-scripted content. It has already produced several strong scripted titles including the drama series In Her Car. Set in war-torn Ukraine and jointly produced with France’s Gaumont, along with France Télévisions, Germany’s ZDF and the Switzerland’s SRF, it has been sold by Germany’s Beta Film to public broadcasters in several countries including Japan and across the Nordics.
Significantly, more than 90 of the top 100 most-watched programmes in Ukraine in the first eight months of this year were shown by Starlight Media. Starlight Media also sees itself as the “bravest” media group in Ukraine in terms of both programming decisions and content production. It was, for instance, the first to launch entertainment programming during the war, as well as dating programming with The Bachelor.
Moreover, it took the decision to launch a comedy sketch series, using its own format, entitled Connection, about Ukrainian families during the war.
Looking to the future, Starlight Media is currently developing a new series-based thematic channel named Super+. However, its main priority right now, according to Kostina, is three basic pay TV movie channels, offering action (Tvoye Kino Action), relaxation (Tyoye Kino Relax) and hits (Tvoye Kino Hit), which it plans to launch simultaneously on November 1 at the earliest, but hopefully by the end of the year.
They are important as they will be distributed to OTT platforms. “In this situation, especially when we don’t have our own OTT platform, we are looking at deeper cooperation with them, because the market is changing,” she adds.
Importantly, Starlight Media is also highly appreciative of the outside support it has received from the industry during this difficult time for Ukraine.
Kostina says: “We are deeply grateful to the major studios, not only for their loyalty and support but also for providing content where good triumphs over evil like Harry Potter movies [from Warner Bros]. These stories resonate with our audience, offering them strength and hope. In challenging times, this kind of content reassures them and reinforces their belief that everything will eventually turn out well.”