German media company ProSiebenSat.1 will for the first time launch a TV channel exclusively targeting German-speaking Switzerland.
“ProSiebenSat.1 has successfully expanded its portfolio with the channels sixx, ProSieben Maxx and Sat.1 Gold in the past years. In Austria, we are also very successful with our channel Puls 4. It therefore makes sense to extend this successful growth strategy to the Swiss market,” Andrea Haemmerli, director of ProSiebenSat.1’s Swiss subsidiary, told Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
“Despite the generally increasing fragmentation of the channel offering, we can thereby increase our group’s market share. We own licences for great international TV content that we also want to show in Switzerland. And there is no 24 hour movie and series channel in Switzerland yet,” explained Haemmerli.
ProSiebenSat.1 has so far not been offering a dedicated Swiss channel, but just Swiss programme and advertising windows on its German channels. The new advertising-suppported free-to-air channel will launch in early October 2015 and target viewers between 20 and 49 years of age. Distribution is planned on all major Swiss cable networks and IPTV platforms within the basic package.
“The focus will be on a broad movie lineup including Hollywood blockbusters, arthouse movies and classics. The genre spectrum will span from romance, family and comedy movies to science-fiction and thrillers. The offering will be complemented by international top series,” revealed Haemmerli. The schedule will comprise TV debuts of recent movies as well as telenovelas and Swiss original productions.
“Initially, we expect to reach audience market shares in the low single-digit area. We hope for a success story comparable with sixx in Germany which now belongs to the large of the small channels with a stable market share,” said Haemmerli.
