The sharp divisions in Slovakia’s TV market were very much in evidence at this week’s Bratislava Business Briefing.
Organised jointly by Broadband TV News and SES, the event featured a presentation by the latter’s Thomas Wrede that included hot-off-the-press figures on the current state of play of the Ultra HD market. As of this month there are 83 Ultra HD channels being distributed worldwide by SES and its competitors, with Europe (33, the majority in SES’s fleet) in top spot, followed by Asia and North America.
Wrede spoke positively about some of the more innovative Ultra HD services now on the market. They include a shopping channel named Pearl TV 4K UHD. He also highlighted the point that there will be a crossover in Q3 2018, when the number of Ultra HD flat screens sold worldwide will for the first time exceed the number of SD and HD sets sold.
The first panel discussion looked at the pay-TV market in Slovakia, which SES’s Martin Ornass-Kubacki said had developed enormously in recent years, evidenced by the number of DTH platforms now operating in the country.
Commenting on those run by Slovak Telekom, the latter’s Andrej Miklanek said that one (Magio Sat) was family-oriented and had around 100,000 subscribers, while the other (Digi) was more focused on sport. He added that the company may seek to find overlaps between the two and how to monetise them.
Furthermore, he also said that Slovak Telekom was taking the first steps towards the smart home, which is now in fact the main product for its parent company Deutsche Telekom.
Miklanek in addition spoke about the importance of localisation in the Slovak market, with services such as the kids channel RiK, which is operated by JOJ, having a clear advantage over non-Slovak language services.
M7 Group’s Jaromir Glisnik meanwhile conceded that the Slovak market does not get its fair share of localisation. However, the Czech language is widely accepted, while in the Czech Republic acceptance of Slovak has increased in recent years.
The second panel, on the other hand, served to highlight some of the deeper divisions still present in the Slovak market. While there was general agreement among the panelists, which included executives from Markiza, JOJ and Antik Telecom, on Ultra HD and that it will take time for it to become established in the country, it was also made clear that progress had been made, especially by Skylink (Jaromir Glisnik) and Antik Telecom (Vlastimil Lakatos). Glisnik made the important point that as soon as mainstream TV channels start broadcasting in native Ultra HD everything will change, with the take-up of services growing.
On the subject of carriage fees, APKT’s Robert Tavoda said that JOJ was charging operators for its channels despite them still being available to viewers terrestrially free of charge. JOJ’s Mojmir Mlcoch countered by saying that the market had moved on and operators had many more ways to monetise their services, for instance through OTT offers.
As the conference drew to a close, M7 Group’s Skylink was accused by a questioner in the audience of effectively condoning card sharing piracy. Jaromir Glisnik conceded that piracy was a major problem but also stressed that it could only be tackled collectively and not just by Skylink on its own.