Why is the Romanian TV market so different to most others in Central and Eastern Europe?
That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for many years, though not in a negative way, as I’ve seen it develop into one of the region’s most dynamic and at the same time fascinating.
What got me thinking about the market again was a brief chat I had earlier this week with Mirek Smyk, the founder and head of MSCG, at a conference in London. His company supported the launch of Orange TV, the new Romanian DTH platform that made its debut earlier this month, and he described it as meeting the market’s need for quality video.
There is certainly a lot different about the platform: as Smyk pointed out, no such service has ever launched in any market with so many channels (100) and so many in HD (40).
Its prices also seem reasonable – at least to an outsider – with the most comprehensive main package, containing 95 channels, costing €12 a month, including VAT, and discounts available for Orange customers.
Yet Orange TV has entered a DTH market already served by four other DTH platforms, with another service – Freesat, distributed by Eutelsat at 16 degrees East, ¬having launched only last month. It charges an annual fee of only RON99 (€21.8) and is clearly targeted at the lower end of the market.
Yet with the three other players Digi TV (RCS&RDS), Dolce (Romtelecom) and Focus Sat (UPC DTH) already well established, Orange TV will probably find it difficult to carve out a niche for itself in the market.
We also now find ourselves back to the situation that existed just over two years ago, when Romania was served by five DTH platforms. This changed when Romtelecom snapped up the two smallest (Boom TV and Akta Satelit) within a short period of time, and we again have to ask ourselves the question of how many satellite TV services the country can actually support.
While there is certainly room for both a low-end and a high-end service, having an additional three appears excessive in a TV sector that also boasts a large cable industry.
It will be interesting to see how Romania’s satellite TV market develops in the next one to two years and if it can indeed sustain five platforms.
