Ukraine’s television industry is no longer operating as a purely domestic business.
Over the last several years, local producers have had to answer the same questions confronting the broader global market: how to finance content in a fragmented environment, how to balance broadcaster demand with platform logic, and how to make shows that can work both as local hits and exportable assets. In Ukraine, though, those questions have often been answered under sharper constraints — tighter margins, less predictability, and, since 2022, the direct disruption of war.
That pressure has created a particular kind of producer, one defined less by title than by operational range.
Oleksii Zarzhytskyi is part of that cohort. A Ukrainian producer with experience in large-scale television and film production, Zarzhytskyi has worked across comedy, serialized television, and larger-format productions, with credits including Cossacks. An Absolutely Fake Story, A House for Happiness, Catch Up by 30, and Romeo and Juliet from Cherkasy. In addition to production management responsibilities, he has served in executive producer roles, giving him a view of the business from both the floor and the leadership level.
“The market has changed from a production business into a decision business,” Zarzhytskyi says. “It’s no longer enough to know how to make a show. You have to understand how it will be financed, where it will premiere, what kind of platform life it might have, and how far the project can travel outside its first audience.”
That’s not just a producer’s talking point. It is a fair description of where the TV business is headed.
The budget split is structural, not cosmetic
One of the clearest divides in any television market is the gap between higher-cost historical production and lower-budget contemporary series. In Ukraine, that divide is especially stark because the economics are less forgiving and the financial margin for error is smaller.
Zarzhytskyi’s own production history reflects that contrast. In 2019, his team produced 12 episodes of Cossacks. An Absolutely Fake Story, running 45 minutes each, on a budget of roughly UAH 32 million before state financing, with additional sponsor support. It was the kind of large-scale historical production that required extensive art direction, costume work, and world-building.
“With historical or period-based production, every creative choice has a budget consequence,” Zarzhytskyi says. “You’re building an entire screen reality. Every costume, every set element, every location choice raises the production threshold.”
By comparison, contemporary comedy series operate on a radically different model. In 2020, Zarzhytskyi says he worked on a 16-episode, 45-minute series at a per-episode cost in the $65,000 to $80,000 range, while comedy production that same year ran at approximately $30,000 to $35,000 per 24-minute episode. Across several comedy titles, that added up to roughly 80 episodes in a single year.
That split matters because it shapes the entire logic of development, production, and financing. Historical projects require time, build-outs, costume departments, location control, and longer prep. Comedy and contemporary series rely on speed, tighter schedules, leaner setups, and highly disciplined production management.
“In lower-budget series, you gain flexibility,” Zarzhytskyi says. “But you lose room for inefficiency. The margin for error becomes very small.”
Scale became strategy
By 2021, output expanded even further. Zarzhytskyi says the company continued existing comedy franchises with 24 additional episodes for returning seasons, while also producing another 24 episodes of a 25-minute comedy series at about $37,000 per episode.
In practical terms, that kind of volume means a producer is no longer just managing individual shoots. He is managing a system.
That system, in Zarzhytskyi’s case, included the executive producer functions that define large-scale television production: production supervision, financial planning, hiring key crew, and operational management. Those are the behind-the-scenes disciplines that determine whether a company can actually sustain high-output television — not just launch it.
“In television, volume only works if the system works,” he says. “At a certain point, producing stops being about one set or one cast. It becomes about architecture — the crew structure, the financial model, the scheduling logic, the ability to keep multiple productions moving without collapse.”
War broke the market — and forced it to reinvent itself
The biggest break in the market came in 2022.
Zarzhytskyi says he had nine series planned for production that year, but Russia’s full-scale invasion disrupted the slate almost immediately. One major project — a 16-episode, 45-minute series budgeted at roughly $75,000 per episode — completed filming on February 21, 2022, just before the war began.
After that, Ukraine’s television market entered survival mode.
Productions slowed sharply. Financing shrank. Many industry workers left the field altogether or took other jobs just to get by. According to Zarzhytskyi, producers and broadcasters held direct conversations about how to keep the business alive at all: budgets were cut dramatically, fees were reduced, and profit margins were stripped out in order to preserve crews and prevent the production base from collapsing.
“We made a conscious decision with broadcasters that this wasn’t a moment to think about normal margins,” Zarzhytskyi says. “The question was simpler: how do we keep people working, and how do we make sure the industry is still here when recovery begins?”
That period reframed the executive producer role. In unstable markets, executive producers are no longer simply supervising output. They are effectively holding together the commercial logic of production — aligning creative teams, operational realities, broadcaster expectations, and survival-level financial strategy.
Platforms changed the recovery equation
Recovery began gradually in 2023.
Zarzhytskyi says one of the early drivers was platform interest, including Netflix’s interest in acquiring content, which helped restart production momentum. That reflects a broader shift in the market: broadcasters still drive a large portion of volume, but platforms increasingly shape long-term value.
Projects associated with the company where Zarzhytskyi held an executive role have reached platforms including Netflix, Crackle, and Ukrainian streaming services, expanding beyond domestic linear broadcast. Some titles also had theatrical exhibition through the Multiplex cinema network, pointing to a broader distribution strategy than a simple TV-first rollout.
“When a project lands on a platform, it stops being just a local programming unit,” he says. “It becomes part of a library, part of a licensing discussion, part of an international viewing environment. That changes how producers think about quality, packaging, and longevity.”
By 2024, Zarzhytskyi says the business had largely returned, in dollar terms, to its prewar comedy-series range of about $35,000 per 24-minute episode. That year, the company produced roughly 72 episodes of 24-minute television, putting total annual output in the range of 50 to 60 hours of content per year.
That kind of scale matters because it suggests not simply activity, but production capacity — the ability to keep a slate moving at industrial volume.
Financing is becoming layered — because it has to
The old TV model was comparatively simple: a broadcaster commissioned, financed, and aired the content. That structure still exists, but it is no longer sufficient for every type of production.
The emerging model is more layered. Depending on the project, financing may include broadcaster support, state backing, platform licensing, sponsor participation, pre-sales, territorial sales, and other extensions that give the content more than one commercial path.
Zarzhytskyi points to state-backed production as one example. In one case, he says he worked remotely on two projects for the Ukrainian state film agency, with a combined funding total of about UAH 14 million for 12 episodes, or roughly UAH 1 million per episode.
“There is no universal financing formula anymore,” he says. “The producer’s job is to build a structure that protects the project creatively while also giving it more than one commercial path. Financing today is not just about raising money. It’s about designing resilience into the production.”
That may be the clearest intersection between the U.S. and Ukrainian markets. Both are moving away from single-outlet dependency. Both are trying to define what sustainable production looks like in a multi-platform environment. And in both cases, the producers with the strongest market value are the ones who can connect creative execution to business architecture.
Comedy remains one of the strongest signals in the market
If there is one genre that reveals the health of a TV market especially quickly, it may be comedy.
By 2025, Zarzhytskyi says his company’s output had expanded again as producers saw clear evidence that Ukrainian audiences still wanted comedy, even — or perhaps especially — under prolonged stress. That year, the company produced approximately 110 episodes of 25-minute content, including both continuing franchises and new titles. Pilot seasons, he says, now tend to fall in the $30,000 to $32,000 range per episode, while established comedy franchises can reach $40,000 to $45,000 per 24-minute episode.
“We were testing the market, and so were our colleagues,” he says. “What became clear is that Ukrainian audiences still respond to comedy. In a high-stress environment, people still need release. They still need to laugh.”
That insight has commercial consequences. It helps explain why comedy production remains such a strategically important segment in Ukraine — and why companies capable of delivering it at scale retain outsized influence in the market.
The next frontier: vertical dramas
Now, Zarzhytskyi says, the market is shifting again.
As traditional Ukrainian production has softened in parts of the market, his team has moved aggressively into vertical dramas, also known as microdramas — a format built for mobile-first consumption and short-form episodic storytelling. He says that move has already led to the creation of Gobyfish, a company producing content for leading vertical platforms in the U.S.
That transition reflects a broader truth about the current production economy: the most durable companies are the ones that adapt fastest.
“The U.S. is the flagship market for vertical microdrama right now,” Zarzhytskyi says. “So if the market changes, the producer has to change with it. Adaptation is no longer optional. It’s part of the business model.”
Recognition in this market comes from execution
In entertainment, recognition is often framed as a visibility story — credits, releases, awards, headlines. But from a production standpoint, recognition usually comes from something more durable: execution.
Can a producer handle scale? Can he move between historical productions, low-budget comedy, crisis-era recovery, and new digital formats? Can he manage teams under pressure and still deliver for broadcasters and platforms?
That is where Zarzhytskyi’s profile becomes notable. His experience spans multiple categories of Ukrainian television production; his executive producer role places him inside the decision-making layer of major projects; and his comments reflect a producer speaking not just about content, but about systems — budgets, financing, market behavior, platform shifts, and structural change.
“In any market, producers earn trust when they can keep quality and structure together,” he says. “That’s what people remember in the long term — not only that the project was made, but that it was made responsibly, at scale, and with a clear understanding of where it belongs in the market.”
That may be the most accurate way to read the current state of the Ukrainian TV sector.
It is still evolving. It is still financially uneven. It is still balancing traditional broadcast economics against platform-era expectations.
But it is no longer thinking in terms of a closed local market.
And the producers shaping that shift are not simply making shows. They are helping define what the next version of the business looks like.