Natpe Budapest 2017: United but different

The incorporation of the Screenings at the market a few years ago generated some doubts, especially on those distributors who believe that this can reduce the number of buyers and meetings. Emanuele Galloni, CEO, Videoplugger (UK) highlights that Natpe is ‘a place where you can find niche stories that are not anywhere else’. ‘We are looking for drama series and content that is different. Today, nobody can survive just with mayor content’.

Regarding the region itself, one of the main trends is: “there are no unique trends in CEE”. Even when CEE is considered a single territory with its societies sharing culture or language, each country has its own singularities. Anyway, some common things can be consider.

First of all, CEE is going though an explosion of new channels and digital platforms, growing after almost ten years of crisis, and opening the game to new competitors, especially in Slovenia and The Balkans, small but very tech-advanced countries. Secondly, there’s a strong demand of local content, a reason why some experts consider that Netflix isn’t having the same results than in other territories such as the US, where it reached 50.85 million subscribers, surpassing for the first time cable TV. ‘The platform has a strong offer but not much local content, and it will take two to five years to produce original content, both in quality and quantity for each demand’, says Felix Wesseler, All3media.

In terms of content, most of the primetime shows are adaptations or remakes of successful brands, even in markets like Poland, a commonly producer of original scripts. Broadcasters aim to save money and play safe, while they acquire stories from neighbors like France, Italy or Germany, and follow a strategy that has propelled Turkey with the adaptation of Japanese and Korean formats. 

Game shows are other mayor success on the primetime with titles like “Your Face Sounds Familiar” (Endemol Shine), which reached 16% of share in Hungary; “SuperYou!”, a new emotainment talent show from MTV Russia, or “Survivor Greece”, with 70% of market share on Skai TV.

Pete Smith, Antenna Group (Greece): ‘Here, Free TV and broadcasters really offer free content and high quality stories. Even with the new players in the market, Free TV keeps being the strongest option’. ‘Pay TV offers crime, dark and Nordic dramas, but we see that, in CEE, when people sit in front of the TV, they want to travel to a time when “everything was better”’, adds Jan Rudovsky, FTV Prima (Czech).

According to Rudovsky, linear TV consumption not only has not gone down, but it has grown during the past years. ‘The difference is that before, audience used to consume only three channels; now they watch 30’. But for Elżbieta Saciuk, TV Spektrum (Poland), there are a few challenges ahead: The first one is to overcome fragmentation. ‘The 30% of the market share in Poland is composed by channels that have less than 1% of audience’. The second one is the increasingly competition, with new SVOD players like ShowMax, launched last February. And lastly, audience is asking for higher quality content..

Rodrigo Cantisano, from Budapest