A Boston businessman working on a new TV project
Richard Caproni, the general director of Vision TV, intrigued me with the company’s new TV project right from the beginning of our interview. The thing is that Richard is working on an “absolutely new TV service to Ukraine,” a satellite television service available throughout the whole country. He didn’t reveal the exact date of its introduction but assured me that it will happen in the “very nearest future.” The newest thing promised to Ukrainians is a wider selection of Ukrainian and international channels offered in different packages. Of course, as an ardent movie fan I was first of all excited by the claimed supply of a number of movie channels. Since the well-known company Viasat is a shareholder of Vision TV, a strong accent is made on Viasat channels.
As our conversation touched upon Volia Cable, the popular cable TV service in Kyiv, Richard stressed that the companies are not competitors. “I was the president of Volia from 2001 to 2002, and I can say that we have very different target markets,” he said. Notwithstanding that the service is provided differently – through satellite versus cable – Volia targets Kyiv, whereas Vision TV is looking at typical families and households around various regions of Ukraine.
The television sector, however, is not the only one in which Richard has worked in Ukraine. Coming here in 1996 with the US government project US Peace Corps, he spent two years in Poltava, where he worked in the area of small business development and taught business courses at Poltava Technical State University.
“Poltava is ‘moia vtoraia rodina,’ my second homeland,” laughed Richard. “In fact, I met my wife in Poltava, although she is from San Francisco,” he recalled. Richard noted that Poltava, though much quieter in comparison with a metropolis like Kyiv, is still one of his favorite cities in Ukraine.
Having been to 20 Ukrainian regions, Richard had much to say on the topic of local diversity. “In the West, you have nature-oriented beauty, whereas in the East, you have much more interesting culture, business, industry, and history, which is also something that I’m interested in,” he shared. Besides, history is one of the subjects peculiarly connected with Richard’s life. Once fascinated by the personality of Peter the Great, the ruler of the Russian Empire in 17th to 18th centuries, he ended up taking a history course and studying the Russian language, finally coming to Poltava, a city with a strong connection to the prominent leader.
Before choosing between Ukraine and Russia back in 1996, Richard heard numerous recommendations from his friends with Russian and Ukrainian roots. “They really talked a lot about Ukrainian hospitality, not mentioning the minor climate difference, which doesn’t play a small role – in Russia it’s colder,” Richard laughed.
Finding chemistry with the Ukrainian people and local traditions very quickly, he is now excited by the day-to-day living that constantly brings something unexpected. This phenomenon also concerns Richard’s going out in the capital: “I really enjoy visiting new places constantly opening in Kyiv. My wife and I always try to find new and exciting places to go,” shared Richard.
Ukrainians’ warm and emotional personal and business relations, however, cannot compensate Richard for the difficulty of doing business in the country. The problems, according to him, mainly concern the process of setting contracts and making agreements. “Every business scenario should be fixed in a contract to avoid conflicts between parties, but in Ukraine, people are used to person to person agreements that can lead to conflicts. When you give a word you put it all on a piece of paper – this element is still being developed in Ukrainian business culture,” Richard said.
A belief that everything in the world is relative is one of the things that help Richard feel at ease in the changing Ukrainian environment. “After living here for some time and then temporarily moving back to America in 2002 to 2005, I was annoyed by the things people were complaining about, for example, waiting – ‘oh my goodness, you have four people in the line and you have to wait for seven minutes,’ Richard explained.
As he noted, things that people find important are all relative but one should keep a perspective on what is really important – family, friends, and personal relationships. “That’s what you remember when you’re on your deathbed, not how many hours you worked or how much money you had and things like that,” Richard shared.
“They say, ‘the grass is always greener.’ I always feel nostalgia for the US, but when I moved back I felt nostalgia for Ukraine as well,” Richard recalled with a sigh. Nevertheless, by now, his plan is to stay in Ukraine for a few more years – to take care of his daughter, born here last year and make the lives of Ukrainians more enjoyable with a new TV service.
