More than half of Polish viewers, including two-thirds that watch DTT services, appreciate the changes currently taking place in the country’s terrestrial TV sector.
According to Wavemaker’s Cyfrowizja Vll project, they value that they are now offered more channels and their reception quality is high. On the other hand, they are less satisfied with the series, films, children’s or sports offer offered by terrestrial channels.
A “dream multiplex” for viewers as a whole would include HBO, Discovery, National Geographic, Canal+ and TVN 24., while those who watch solely terrestrial would like to see National Geographic, HBO, Discovery, NatGeo Wild and Polsat Sport.
Polsat, with a slight advantage over TVN, is currently considered the most interesting terrestrial channel by all Polish TV viewers. TVN7, Super Polsat and TV Puls complete the top five. Meanwhile, terrestrial viewers, whose offer is limited to FTA channels, regard Polsat, followed by TVN7, Fokus and TVN, as the most interesting DTT channels.
The Cyfrowizja VII project shows that 16% of current terrestrial viewers (19% in 2021) have thought about buying a subscription from a pay-TV operator in the last year. However, the last two years have seen according to the Nielsen founding study, a slight increase in the percentage of customers of paid operators. Hence, a slightly smaller base of terrestrial households that could consider buying a subscription in a cable or digital platform. In addition to the operators’ attractive offers, among the key pay-TV attractions is the possibility of buying a subscription to streaming services from the operator.
Data from the Cyfrowizja Project clearly show that there is now a classic ‘frienemy’ in Poland between cable TV and pay streaming services. On the one hand, cable TV offers the opportunity to buy packages from streamers on attractive terms, which tempts viewers looking for shopping convenience. On the other, these packets are a factor inducing cord cutting. Nearly 30% of terrestrial viewers who do not consider buying a subscription to pay-TV say that the reason is their subscription to Netflix, HBO Max or Player, which meets their needs as viewers. For this group of viewers, this is the third most important reason not to consider buying a pay-TV subscription.
