The sale of a majority stake in Poland’s TVN to Scripps Network Interactive has come as something of a surprise.
It also serves to underline the US company’s ambitions in Europe, where it already owns a 50% stake in UKTV and – if recent reports are to be believed – is keen on buying the remaining share, held by the BBC.
TVN was launched amid great fanfare – I know, I was there – in 1997 by ITI Group and CME. It quickly became the station of choice for an urban, affluent and more educated audience, while Polsat, its big rival, fared better among viewers who lived outside Poland’s main towns and cities.
While there may still be some truth in the audience profile of the two stations, a huge amount has changed in the Polish TV industry in the last 18 years. It is now as diverse, mature and sophisticated as many in Western Europe.
TVN has kept its place as one of the country’s leading broadcasters and indeed has gone from strength to strength, even in recent months.
However, its main backers ITI Group and Canal+ effectively decided in late 2014 to sell their majority stake in the company and this, not surprisingly, attracted interest from some of the industry’s biggest players.
They included Time Warner, now the owner of CME (the latter exited the Polish market in 1998 due to irreconcilable differences with ITI Group); Discovery Communications; and Germany’s Bauer.
In the end, and almost out of the blue, Scripps came into the picture and sealed a deal worth €584 million and also covering TVN’s debts of €840 million.
It will be interesting to see where Scripps now takes TVN. Its experience lies in the content field, where it currently distributes the proprietary channels Travel Channel and local version of Food Network.
The latter is known as Polsat Food and the Polish broadcaster quickly released a statement saying it would continue to work with Scripps despite its acquisition of TVN.
Some now see the acquisition of TVN, along with moves to gain complete control of UKTV, as the first steps in a major expansion by Scripps into Europe. They are likely to be right.
