MOSCOW, Dec. 4, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the end of November CTC channel adjusted its evening prime-time. November 18-26 from Monday till Thursday at 10:00pm instead of foreign movies CTC aired a new fantastical thriller After Life (Vizhit Posle), produced by Art Pictures Vision and containing 12 episodes. The average target audience share of the mini-series reached 13.7% in the 10-45 demographic, which was 20% higher than the average share of this time-slot. The series' maximum share on other days exceeded 19% throughout Russia. The high figures prove that original Russian content is quite strong and competitive.

Viacheslav Murugov, Chief Content Officer of CTC Media, Head of CTC Channel: "The premiere of the Russian mini-series After Life in a slot that was traditionally held by foreign movies is a fundamentally new programming solution for CTC. Just like Youth Hockey League (Molodezhka), we filmed After Life together with Fyodor Bondarchuk's team. The high audience share numbers for Russia and Moscow attest to the fact that a quality Russian product is capable of performing similar to or even better than purchased foreign content.

"In the next few years, we plan on gradually moving away from foreign movies and reducing the share of content from Hollywood majors at CTC. In the evening primetime there will be more Russian produced projects created to our order and on the basis of our creative ideas. Investing in domestic content is an important decision that will allow us to maintain a variety of genres and to strengthen the channel's content library."

After Life

Executive producers: Viacheslav Murugov, Fyodor Bondarchuk

Producers: Dmitry Tabarchuk, Dmitry Rudovsky, Rimma Shulgina, Anna Olshevskaya

Directors: Dushan Gligorov, Alexander Boguslavsky  

Starring: Ivan Makarevich, Shamil Khamatov, Galina Zvyagintseva, Dmitry Endaltsev, Evgeniya Rozanova, Sergey Godin, Lybov Novikova, Valeriya Fyodorovich, Alexander Galibin, and others.

Eleven young people are locked in an underground bunker. They don't know each other. No one remembers how they got there. And, most importantly, they don't know what's happening outside. They've been selected for an experiment. The powerful company, Vector, is developing a virus whose goal is to create a new race of perfect humans ready to execute the will of their creator. But the plan goes wrong...The virus breaks out of control and turns into a deadly weapon...Now all of Moscow is its laboratory!    

About CTC Media, Inc.

CTC Media is a leading Russian independent media company, with operations throughout Russia and elsewhere in the CIS. It operates three free-to-air television networks in Russia – CTC, Domashny and PERETZ – as well as Channel 31 in Kazakhstan with a combined potential audience of over 150 million people. The international pay-TV version of the CTC channel is available in North America, Europe, Central Asia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Middle East and Kyrgyzstan. PERETZ is also available in Belarus. CTC Media has a number of digital entertainment media assets: videomore.ru, domashniy.ru, ctc.ru, peretz.ru. The Company's common stock is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol "CTCM".  For more information on CTC Media, please visit www.ctcmedia.ru.