“COVID HAS DISTURBED THE ADVERTISING MARKET, SO WE HAVE ACCELERATED TV SERIES PRE-PRODUCTION”

“We are shooting new TV series this summer to be able to always respond and launch new shows flexibly to achieve sufficient TV ratings and advertising space,” says Marek Singer, Prima TV’s CEO, explaining Prima’s current strategy. Médiář interviewed him immediately after the presentation of Prima’s programme schedule for this autumn.

Prima TV’s autumn programme schedule is based on three new TV series. I cannot remember so many new series in a single season on Prima. One of them, Hvězdy nad hlavou, has been completed for a year according to the information provided at a press conference on Tuesday. Was this accumulation of new shows caused by the covid pandemic because of which you suspended the launch of some new works in the previous year?

In part. In part it is also because we have accelerated pre-production due to covid that disturbed the advertising market. At the moment we are not able to predict reliably how much money from the advertising we actually receive and when. We have to have our shows prepared in advance to be able to launch them at the right time.

To have new shows in stock.

Exactly. That is why we are shooting new series this summer. In short, to be prepared to always respond and launch new items flexibly in order to achieve sufficient viewership and advertising space. The covid pandemic increased TV ratings and advertisers invest in TV ads in the post-covid time more than expected. We want to respond to this in the autumn. This is why our autumn season seems so packed with content this year and why we call it the Star Season.

Do you expect next spring and autumn to be so packed as well?

Give me a crystal ball and I will tell you.

How many shows are you shooting to keep them in stock?

Several TV series. Production of new shows is rather costly after all. And keeping a too big library in reserve makes no sense, trends and viewer preferences change quickly.

Are you not facing a lack of makers when your major competitor, TV Nova, is draining the market, hiring massively, headhunting key managers from Česká televize, addressing future makers and announcing that due to the production of its new shows - mainly for its paid internet portal Voyo - it is increasing its production spend by 30%? Is there anyone available in the market?

Everyone is draining the market. Except for us and Nova, Česká televize is also active and in addition, there are foreign film productions, such as The Grey Man, working for global video services such as Netflix. The market is overheated, that is true, but on the other hand, our practice of working with markers on a long-term basis has proved successful and when we addressed them several months ago, they brought in many interesting proposals. We decided to implement them because the results can be used anytime - both in linear broadcasting and on the internet as VOD. I personally prefer a combined model, such as TV Now of the German RTL, when a new show is first run on the internet as a paid service and later it is included in TV broadcasting.

You have recently launched your Prima Pauza platform. I understand it as recycling of your existing content that you additionally monetize in a short form through Seznam, the largest Czech website.

Exactly. We have videos in our own website in the Prima Pauza section but they are expected to generate a higher number of views through Seznam.cz or Stream. It is a symbiosis. Seznam.cz as a content aggregator is interested in professional content but due to its nature, it has no video library comprising TV series composed of one-hour episodes; they are much shorter. We have also tried to edit our series to have twelve minutes. It requires some invention but it is possible. In substance, it is one of the forms of working with the archive. We draw inspiration from a US service that was shooting short series for the web. However, our concept of Prima Pauza is an opportunity to remember series that viewers know from TV but have not enough time to watch them again in full. The twelve-minute versions are good for them when they want to have a short break filled with quick entertainment.

After fifteen months, Libor Bouček is leaving the screen of CNN Prima News, which he called the largest challenge of his career last year. Why? It is true that he is a new father, which may be demanding in combination with the preparation of daily morning broadcasts.

You should ask him in the first place. In my opinion, multiple factors played a role in his leaving, one of them is definitely the need the get up really early due to the morning shows. Libor is a clever and competent author of our shows. The most credit for the success of our competition show Máme rádi Česko goes to him as a script writer. But at this time, he cannot manage to do everything he would like to and has to make a choice. And the largest portion of his work that took most of his time was CNN Prima News.

Bouček moved to the position of a script editor in chief of Prima’s entertainment production. Is it a new position?

We rather move his position because we move the entire genre of reality entertainment. We produce more shows and thus we need more competent people to deal with it.

We were told that he would work on upcoming new projects. Can you specify them? I have heard that he is to participate in the election broadcast.

He participated in the new series of the reality show Tlouštíci and he certainly continues working on the competition Máme rádi Česko. We plan to include him in the election broadcast but at the moment we cannot reveal any details.

 This year, you have tested a reality show with young influencers Like House. Your plan was to attract younger viewers to the main Prima channel. Will you go on?

We are working on it but we will definitely make changes. We have learnt our lesson, the concept was working well mainly on the internet but on TV it was even fined several times by the Council for the Radio and Television Broadcasting. For such a show, 5 pm is not an ideal time.

In the spring, you told me that you were holding discussions with Česká televize on a possible form and functioning of a common online video library comprising shows of all local TVs that the CEO of Česká televize, Petr Dvořák, calls Czechflix with a bit of exaggeration and that could operate as a local counterweight to the global video services such as Netflix. How far are the discussions?

I frankly admit that the discussions are going on but everyone has their own ideas. Our competitor distributes shows through a paid video platform as the central point of its strategy [Editor’s Note: He is talking about TV Nova that wants to primarily increase attractiveness of its own video library Voyo.]. I think that we will come to a consensus on the progress and there will be a common video platform. But I cannot guess how fast.

Prima TV does not see its original production for the internet as a way to follow? You place paid previews on the website or recycle content but there has been no exclusive online production so far.

I am not saying that we will not produce anything for digital. But considering the size and structure of the Czech market with a large number of people not used to paying for their TV, relying on digital is a risky strategy requiring enormous expenditures and there may be no return on the investment. A more feasible solution is to be creative with the archive, in other words, to identify what from the archive works for what audiences, in what form and with what type of distribution.

We can provide customised content if we have data on users who register on the internet. If all of the three TV companies are doing it together it may work even better because we would be able to satisfy the preferences of individual viewers faster and more precisely. But first we have to agree on the key principles. However, any of the three broadcasters who are basically interested has a different idea of how to do it.

Source: mediar.cz