Nova assumes that within several years, Czech households will subscribe to an average of three Netflix-type streaming services. One of them should be Nova’s Voyo.
Over the last two years, Nova has decided to invest massively in this platform that has been operating since 2011. Nova produces interesting series, such as Iveta or Případ Roubal, exclusively for Voyo’s library. At the same time, it believes that in the future, this type of video content distribution will become an important pillar of the television, which generates over CZK 5.2 billion a year in the Czech Republic. For the time being, the majority of sales are driven by TV advertising. Nevertheless, the ratio should change in the future.
“In the long-term horizon, VOD services will definitely be one of our strategic pillars. But it will not be the primary and most important part. Linear TV continues to be the most mass medium thanks to its reach and distribution,” says Jan Vlček, one of the two co-CEOs of TV Nova in an interview for Hrot.
The former long-terms Sales Director of Nova has shared the position of the TV station’s CEO with Klára Brachtová since 2019.
The bet on Nova’s own quality content has been working well according to Vlček and the growth in the audience of paid Voyo service exceeded their expectations.
“We have obviously managed to enter the market in the growth moment when demand for these services is growing significantly. It was unbelievable what levels of subscriber increases we saw after our strategic shift. It has been two years today. We decided that it was time to invest because the subscriber base was attracted namely by the quality of content,”
explains Vlček, adding that the TV management plan expects that within five years, Nova will have a million subscribers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“At the moment, we have more than 350 thousand subscribers in aggregate in both countries. We have reached our annual milestones so far. We have exceeded our last year’s target in Autumn 2021. Voyo has recently joined global players and has taken the second place in the Czech market,” says Vlček who has a wealth of experience from TV Nova’s headquarters in Barrandov. In 2011, he was hired by Adrian Sarbu, a Romanian troublemaker who managed the entire CME from Prague, and Jan Andruško, lawyer and Nova’s former CEO.
At that time, Vlček was no greenhorn, having worked for multinational media groups such as WPP, as well as managing Richard Fuxa’s BigBoard group.
Later, he also undergone the German therapy of Christoph Mainusch, a consistent micromanager who was sent to Prague by US shareholders to prepare Nova together with the entire CME for sale. And now, from his position of CEO, he is creating a new era for the most successful TV station in Central Europe controlled by the PPF investment group.
Source: tydenikhrot.cz
