Russia sets out DTT channel strategy
Russia’s President Medvedev has signed a decree that guarantees viewers will receive eight free TV channels and three free radio stations when the country completes its transition to digital broadcasting. The TV channels in question will be Channel One, Rossiya, Vesti 24, NTV, Kultura, Sports and Petersburg – Channel 5, along with a still-to-be launched channel aimed at children and young people. The latter, based in Telenyana and Bibigon, will have to be set up by January 1, 2011. All the channels will be distributed over one frequency employing MPEG-4 compression.

This report, which is part of the Broadband TV News Briefing Series, looks at the cable industries of the 14 largest markets in CEE. Besides providing an up-to-date overview of each market, it also includes detailed sections on the key players, where they currently stand in the digitalisation process and their plans for the future. Buy Now from the Broadband TV News Shop.

Bulgaria awards DTT licence
Hannu Pro has secured the right to operate three DTT multiplexes in Bulgaria. Several reports indicate that the country’s Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) has awarded the licences, after having shortlisted Hannu Pro Bulgaria and Adepto from six original candidates. Hannu Pro is a leading system integrator company, based in the Baltic Republics and part of the Silicon Group. Bulgaria is aiming to complete the transition to digital broadcasting in December 2012.

Multimedia outlines future plans
The Polish cable operator Multimedia Polska expects to invest between PLN170-190 million (€37.6 – 42.0 million) this year on upgrading its infrastructure, according president Andrzej Rogowski. Quoted in Wirtualne Media, he added while much of this money will come from revenues, some may also be obtained from bank credits. Rogowski said that Multimedia Polska’s build plans in Warsaw are going according to plan – it expects to have passed 80,000 households by September, with the figure subsequently rising to 120,000. It is also likely to become a MVNO and start to offer mobile internet services. Earlier this week it was announced that Multimedia Polska now has 100,000 digital TV subscribers.

IPTV boost for Romania
The hitherto tiny IPTV sector in Romania is likely to grow significantly in the next five years. According to the findings of a report produced by Pyramid Research and published in ZF, this will be due to the entry of a number of new suppliers such as Orange, Vodafone and the incumbent telco Romtelecom, which already operates Dolce, one of the country’s five DTH platforms. At present, IPTV services are confined to such companies as Bucharest-based Ines, which had only around 500 subscribers at the end of last year. The report also predicts that the fixed line internet market, both DSL and cable, will grow by a rate of 4.1% a year to 2014.

Bulgarian news channel secures backer
The Bulgarian news-based cable and satellite channel Evropa has seen a change in ownership. According to Dnevnik, an Austrian media company named Stevia Communications has agreed to buy a 50% stake in the channel for an undisclosed fee. Stevia Communications is understood to be part of Altelys, a media group with interests in The Netherlands and reportedly negotiating the acquisition of TV stations in Serbia and Macedonia. Evropa was launched in 2001 and aims to set up a second channel, offering entertainment programming, in the next couple of months.

DTT subsidy worry for Poland
Up to 1.4 million homes in Poland could be left without the ability to watch TV following the country’s transition to digital broadcasting. According to Gazeta Prawna, neither the Ministry of Finance, nor indeed cable and satellite operators, are willing to contribute towards the estimated PLN350 million (€77.3 million) that would be needed to subsidise set-top boxes for the most needy sections of the population. Poland will start switching off analogue transmitters in 2011 and complete the transition to digital broadcasting two years later.

Final lap for Polish media law
The Polish parliament (Sejm) has approved all the major changes to the country’s new media law proposed by the Senate. According to Gazeta Prawna, the legislation will now be passed to the Polish president. He can approve or reject the new law, or otherwise forward it on to the Constitutional Tribunal. The new media law will see the scrapping of receiver licence fees and introduction of a new financing scheme for public broadcasting that will have to be approved by the EC.

New milestone for UPC Romania
UPC now has 250,000 internet subscribers in Romania. Speaking to ZF, its marketing director Raluca Milin said that considerable investment and price changes had dramatically reduced the number of customers wishing to stop using the company’s internet service. Of the €52 million UPC plans to invest in Romania this year, €15 million will in fact be allocated to the service, which will start to commercially offer download speeds of up to 100 Mbps from 2010 onwards. UPC also plans to add HD channels to its offer in Romania this autumn.

Czech digital costs mount
Digitalisation is proving to be a costly process for broadcasters in the Czech Republic. Speaking at the Digimedia 2009 conference and quoted in HN, Pavel Hanus, the head of programming at CT, said that the public station is facing the biggest negative impact as it has to date been responsible for 50% of digitalisation. This is reflected in a huge loss in viewing figures for its second channel CT2 since switching off analogue transmissions. Although commercial broadcasters have been hit by the slump in the ad market, Marek Singer, the DG of TV Prima, said that this had not affected its strategy. Recently launched digital channels, with still have low audience figures, remain more vulnerable to the downturn.

Russian copyright dispute winds down
A music copyright dispute in Russia involving the VGTRK and Prof-Media appears to be coming an end. Cableman reports that the state broadcaster VGTRK and Prof Media, which operates MTV, TV3 and 2x2, have finally reached an agreement with the collection society RAO. The dispute originally stems from a decision by the government to raise the minimum royalty rate from 1% to 2% of TV stations’ revenues. The only station to still be in dispute is CTC Media’s DTV.

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People

Leading executive to leave CME
Wallace Macmillan is to step down as the CFO of Central European Media Enterprises (CME), effective July 1. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Charles Frank Jr, who has been an independent director at the company since 2001. CME operates commercial TV stations in seven CEE countries.

New Fox Baltics sales rep
Fox International Channels (FIC) has appointed Karoli Hindriks its ad sales representatives for the Baltic Republics. Based in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, she will work from the local company Goodmood Media OÜ to develop a commercial department for the region. Hindriks was previously marketing manger for MTV Networks Baltics and the country manager for Estonia.

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Chris Dziadul Reports Russia gets going Russia’s transition to digital broadcasting is finally starting to take shape following a late start, even by regional standards.

Although it was one of the first countries in CEE to launch a DTT service – Telemedium operated in St Petersburg between 2002 and 2004 – Russia has only had a digital strategy in place since November 2007. It was then announced that the DVB-T standard would be employed to offer viewers 5-6 free public digital TV channels, along with 3-4 free digital radio stations, by the ASO date, which was set for 2015.

The emphasis was clearly on offering a basic minimum number of channels nationally, and there was no mention of pay services. Costs of the transition were put at €10 billion, of which at least €3.6 billion would come from the private sector.

Since then we have, of course, had the global economic crisis, which has hit Russia badly, as well as phenomenal growth in the take-up of satellite-delivered services. The latter are now provided by no fewer than five platforms in the country, with the market leader Tricolor TV claiming around 5 million subscribers.

Although there have been a number of announcements related to the transition in the last year and a half, two made earlier this week were of particular significance.

The first saw President Medvedev approve the composition of what will be Russia’s first DTT multiplex. In total, it will carry eight digital TV channels and three digital radio stations, all of which will be available to viewers free of charge. Perhaps the only surprise was the omission of the national commercial network CTC, which is backed by Modern Times Group (MTG), from the list.

The second was a clarification of the costs that will be involved in undertaking the transition. According to Igor Shchegolev, the Minister of Mass Communications, they will be region of R120-127 billion (€2.76 -2.92 billion), of which some R80 billion will be provided by the federal budget.

He added that launching a national DTT service would require the use of five new satellites and that ASO would only be completed once 95% of the population have digital decoders, typically costing $80-100 (€57.3-71.7) each.

Certainly at this stage, there are no plans to include a pay element in Russia’s future DTT operation. The emphasis will be on delivering a basic minimum service, most probably through the use of state-of-the-art technology, to the entire population.

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