On the one hand, there is a lot of interesting media content today. On the other hand, it is buried in too much meaningless, dirty, absurd material. Finding an interesting source, which is constantly updated and not disappointing, is expensive today.

This is a very vital issue in Armenia, as we have a mental health problem in the current information media sadness, apart from being merely aware.

Today we meet several types of interesting, satisfying content (of course, there are incomparably many types, but let’s leave aside those with a small audience, very narrow professions and street photography).

Longreads. Which in Armenia, let’s agree, are few. And the interesting ones are even fewer. Longread readers already need to register somewhere outside the Red Book because they are on the verge of extinction.

Interesting blog posts. Which are the distant relatives of the Longreads. Almost destroyed in Armenia.

Unexpectedly good TikTok videos. Yes, they happen, you can come across them. They are few, but they exist. Moreover, I may seem like an unsuccessful optimist, but I think the number will increase.

Podcasts. Let’s stop here for a while.

First of all, it should be noted that when you say podcast, you no longer have to imagine purely audio formats. All this fits very nicely in the video version as well. Whoever wants to will consume it. The situation with podcasts (and more broadly, video blogs) in Armenia is very interesting and strange at the same time.

Why?

Let me tell you. Let me bring a few observations to make it clear. On the one hand, in YouTube, which is growing very well in Armenia, in the last year, there is a general depression, a decrease in views, a decrease in all possible rates. We are talking about Armenian media channels. The same thing is observed with famous YouTube vloggers. Although the audience is growing, the majority of views either do not increase or even decrease.

One of the reasons is obvious․ TikTok is stealing the YouTube audience. And content creators are forced to create TikToks and, of course, Instagram Reels.

But the point is that YouTube and TikTok content are different for the same vloggers. For two understandable reasons: the difference between the shortness of the videos and the demands of the audience.

And society has a demand to receive interesting content, not just news content. Of course, it is possible to summarize with Perfect TV or similar surreal content. But a significant part of society is not so inconsolable.

By and large, now we have a situation where

• There are interesting podcasts and blogs. But they are often not updated for months.
• There are several successful online interviewing programs. But the problem of Armenia is that the population is small, the number of interesting interlocutors is, to put it mildly, finite. Since such dialogues are mostly conversations about life, not professional ones, the topics are quickly consumed.
• As a result, people go to foreign content, mainly in Russian.

It may seem that the situation is getting worse. But it also creates great opportunities, as if it were a real life coaching fairy tale.

There is a clear demand for interesting content in society. The only problem is that the creators of the content must have a little energy to produce it and take into account the demands of today’s audience.

And, of course, it is necessary to redistribute the advertising budgets. This is a more complicated problem, as advertisers in Armenia have either sat on a crossword puzzle in an old traditional newspaper next to a picture of a girl in a swimsuit or switched to the “file-market” version of influencer marketing. Which gives little space to good, quality content.

It is comforting that a layer of young digital marketing professionals is being formed in Armenia, who will be able to redistribute advertising budgets to quality content fairness. They will be able to, but whether they want to or not, we will see soon.

Samvel Martirosyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.