On April 26, NTV channel aired the final episode of the singing competition Maska (The Masked Singer), which gathered a record number of viewers around their TV sets on Sunday evening. The three-hour finale of the musical show got fantastic broadcast numbers and gave the channel its maximum rating since 2011. Maska has become the main broadcast event of 2020, the best entertainment program on Russian television over the last four years and the best musical show over the last seven years.
The viewership share of the first season’s final episode among viewers aged 18+ reached 28.5%, with a rating of 10.7%. At the climatic moment of the show when the winner took off the mask, the viewership share rose to 38%.
Among a young audience, aged 14 to 44, the show got a 5.6% rating and a 23.4% share, which rose to 30.6% when the winner was announced.
The last time that NTV reached a rating of 10.7% was during its broadcast of the series Glukhar. Vozvrashenie (Glukhar. The Return) on October 27, 2011.
NTV started broadcasting Maska on March 1. Since its launch, the show repeatedly got the highest ratings among an audience aged 18+ as well as young viewers, aged 14 to 44.
The identities of all four finalists were revealed in Sunday’s show finale. The lead singer of the band Vintazh, Anna Pletneva, was hidden behind the Parrot mask. Russia’s award-winning singer Larisa Dolina was disguised as the Deer, while the lead singer of the band Slivki, Karina Koks, posed as the Wolf. The project winner, wearing the Lion mask, was singer Anatoliy Tsoy (TSOY).
NTV’s team launched a powerful online campaign to promote the project. The VKontakte social network was the show’s partner. Maska was also widely represented on Instagram and YouTube. As part of the promo campaign, viewers tried to uncover the main secret of the show - who is hiding behind the masks?
VKontakte’s official online presentation of Maska got more than 1.1 million views. The total number of views for Maska videos added up to about 15 million, with the social network’s users also leaving more than 200,000 comments and 500,000 reactions to the videos as they discussed the latest developments on the show. The total coverage of the promo campaign in VKontakte was 4.5 million people. The network’s users could also apply the official mask filter for their own stories.
Meanwhile, Instagram users could take part in the contest “Sorval masku - sorval kush!” (Took off the mask! Hit the jackpot!). The official account of the show published a questionnaire every day with questions about the upcoming episode. To participate, people needed to fill in the questionnaire and post it in their Instagram stories. More than 10,000 forms were filled in. The announcement of the contest, which was designed in the popular style of advertising used for sports betting, was placed on various entertainment outlets and received more than 400,000 views. The contest’s advertising campaign on Instagram reached more than 5 million users. The show also got support from famous social media personalities, such as Jean Sodel and Muzikalny Bespredel, which released a series of entertaining clips about each of Maska’s contestants - the Lion, Wolf, Panda, and others. About 30 integrations with popular bloggers were done as part of the promo campaign, with the number of views on their pages exceeding 5 million.
