What a difference a year’s made, at least for the Polish national commercial broadcaster TVN.
Twelve months ago, as part of the US’s Discovery Group, it found itself in the early stages of a dispute with the government over a licence extension for its news channel TVN 24. This escalated over the coming months, with at one point Discovery looking likely to exit the country over proposed amendments to legislation that came to be known as ‘Lex TVN’.
This was in due course resolved in favour of TVN, thanks in no small part to international pressure. However, no sooner had that happened when an equally important development took place, albeit on the ownership front. It saw the broadcaster become part of an even larger media group and renamed TVN Warner Bros. Discovery.
Perhaps not surprisingly, this was a catalyst for change and gave the broadcaster fresh momentum. Subscribers to its Player.pl on demand service were among the first to benefit, seeing their offer increase by seven new channels, mostly from Warner Media, from the beginning of July.
The departure of Edward Miszczak, who had been at TVN since its launch in 1997 and was programming director until earlier this summer, was also undoubtedly a factor in a major restructuring of the broadcaster’s programming division. Announced only days ago, it saw new roles for the executives Bogdan Czaja and Jaroslaw Potasz, with Lidia Kazen assuming the newly created position of TVN channel director. It also heralds, according to Kasia Kieli, president & MD Warner Bros. Discovery in Poland and CEO of TVN, “a new philosophy of managing programmes and channels in the group”.
With TVN Warner Bros. Discovery also recently announcing that it was the market leader in June – its channels had a combined audience share of 25.2% – and that it had almost 750 million views for its channels on YouTube in the first half of this year – this is clearly a positive time for the broadcaster. However, Poland is one of the most competitive markets in Central and Eastern Europe and to remain so successful it will have to maintain its momentum.
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