The Polish regional station TV Puls plans to launch a number of thematic channels ahead of the country’s transition to digital broadcasting in 2012, according to its president, Dariusz Dabski.
TV Puls is backed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and aims to become a leading player in a market hitherto dominated by publicly owned TVP and the national commercial stations Polsat and TVN. It is reported to be currently available terrestrially to around 30% of Polish viewers and 77% of those receiving their programming via cable or satellite.
The new channels, probably obtained from the News Corp. stable, are likely to be accompanied by moves to increase TV Puls’s coverage and raise its audience share, which, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, still stands at less than 1%.
