P o l a n d R e p o r t Pioneering Format Trend Bodes Well BY TIMHORAN Tim Horan is ITI Group’s executive vice president in Poland. He previously spent three years at Russia’s leading production company, AMEDIA. Here, he discusses the differences (and similarities) between the two Eastern European markets. Poland and Russia continue to be dynamic production environments. There are similarities between the two markets and some of the same formats have succeeded in both countries. But one of the major differences is that vertical programming is a feature of the Polish market, while Russia remains predominantly tied to a horizontal programming model. Poland’s major commercial network, TVN, successfully runs local versions of sitcoms The Nanny, entitled Nania, and Grace Under Fire, entitled Hela w Opalach. Local production company ATM Grupa is also producing Sony’s Who’s the Boss for Polsat. While Poland has followed in Russia’s footsteps with some sitcom adaptations, the Polish stations are more selective. Poland was primarily responsible for the trend of developing daily soaps — principally from Fremantle on TVN and Polsat — before Russia ventured in that direction. TVN’s Na Wspollnej, based on the Fremantle format Between Friends, runs daily from Monday to Thursday, and has been very successful. Poland is a fruitful market for distributors of entertainment formats. Both Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Big Brother were popular on TVN. Big Brother has made a return to TV 4 this past autumn. Fremantle’s Pop Idol was very successful on Polsat and BBC’s Dancing with the Stars had a phenomenal 30 percent share on TVN. Similarly, in Russia there are two successful variations of Stars on Ice on First Channel and Channel Russia. In their different and complementary ways, Poland and Russia offer unique opportunities for producers and distributors alike to license their formats, develop original co-productions and collaborate with the creative talent that is emerging in these nascent markets. Eastern Europe Focus TV PULS GETS NEW LICENSE In January 2007, the Polish National Broadcasting Council, the country’sTV regulatory agency, approvedTelewizja Puls’ application to trade in its specialty niche-programming license (for religious and family programming) for a universal license, allowing it to build a stronger presence in the Polish market. TV Puls is being rebranded this fall as a contemporary channel that is up to the pace of modern-day Poland and the European Union. It is creating an independent news department with leading journalists, famous on-air anchors and popular reporters for strong and aggressive newscasts.TV Puls News will station news teams throughout the country, so that stories can be reported when and where they happen. On the entertainment programming side, the schedule will be a combination of locally produced content, acquired programs and international formats adapted to Polish tastes. International formats include Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?, The Newlywed Game, The Package, Poland’s Worst Driver and The Biggest Loser.The channel will also broadcast Just for Laughs and Criminal Minds. TV Puls, which is owned by U.S.-based News Corporation and the local Order of the Franciscan Brotherhood, has so far invested millions of dollars in new state-of-the art HD facilities with two major studios, relocated in the historic Chelsmka Studio Lot inWarsaw. To run the operation, the owners called in industry veteran Farrell E. Maisel, who recently moved from Palm Springs, CA to Warsaw. Prior to joining Puls, Maisel worked for U.S. Government-funded Alhurra Television, the 24/7 pan-regional, satellite-delivered news and information-based network, which broadcasts to Arabic-speaking countries. Before that, he was group COO of Media Corp. in Singapore. From 1997-2001 he served as president and principal in the FMI Media Group, where he represented clients in Turkey, Scandinavia, Russia, Benelux and Central Europe in start-ups, reengineering and operations. Back in 1992, he was also based in Eastern Europe, launching Russia’s first private, commercial TV station for Turner Broadcasting System,TV6. Farrell E. Meisel, president of the Management Board at TV Puls It will continue to grow. Free-to-air channels will lose viewers as a result of cable. The next step will be IPTV and video-on-demand services. But now the two biggest obstacles when it comes to development of IPTV platforms are piracy issues and the high costs of setting up the platform. Competition is already very high. When I was in Russia this past summer I noticed that many new scripted series and TV movies were airing during what used to be a slow season. If that’s the case in the summer, just imagine how the other seasons are going to be. Business will continue to grow. As a result, there will be more mergers and acquisitions between media companies, production companies, distribution companies and channels. VAI: Finally, can you tell us a little bit about Intra Communications? LY: We were one of the first U.S. companies to begin distribution and production in Russia. We buy shows from countries all over the world and from studios (including the majors) and distribute them to Russia and CIS countries. We also produce miniseries, TV movies and telenovelas in Russia in Russianlanguage, and perform voice-overs and dubbing of foreign programs. VAI: Why did you start this business? LY: We saw a demand for quality programming in Russia. We started in the 1990s with telenovelas because almost every TV channel across the CIS countries had a telenovela slot. It was a cheap way to fill up daytime hours. For us, it was easier to guarantee payment with telenovelas. If you sell a TV movie and your client never pays, there’s nothing you can do, but with a 150-episode telenovela, you can supply the first 20 episodes, and if you don’t get paid, stop supplying them. (Continued from Page 62) Champagne & Caviar V I D E O • A G E OC T O B E R 2 0 0 7 64 Leonard Yanovsky is president and CEO of Intra Communications
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