In a crisis, people typically cut back on non-essentials like entertainment. But Nova TV, which resurrected the fading streaming video platform Voyo last year, is not complaining about declining interest. Voyo has already half a million users, and despite the crisis, their numbers continue to grow.
“Now in the spring season, Voyo consumption is approaching fourteen hours per week on one account, which is two hours per day. It shows that when people cut back on leisure activities, they have more time to fill,” says Daniel Grunt, who has been running the country’s largest commercial broadcaster since the beginning of this year.
What you can read in the interview:
Why isn’t Nova worried about the loss of money from TV advertising?
How did the Ordinace v růžové zahradě 2 series contribute to Voyo’s reboot?
Why is Nova betting on its own series for a more demanding audience?
Why are Czech TV shows also available on Voyo?
How does Daniel Grunt rate Rey Koranteng’s performance in the presidential election debates?
What does your appointment to the head of Nova mean? You’ve led various digital projects for a long time. So is this a signal that digital is now playing a major role at Nova and that your streaming platform Voyo will be the main one to develop?
I wouldn’t say that Nova wants to fundamentally shift its priorities towards digital. It has to do with the way the growth of streaming services has accelerated over the last three years, kick-started by covid. People spend a not inconsiderable amount of time watching them.
But we can’t just push digital. Traditional TV still feeds us and brings us a large part of our income. That should be true for the next five or seven years. But the growth of digital services cannot be ignored. We have caught momentum in this sector and it is good to build on it.
In the world of paper media, advertising revenues are falling. Is it the same for TV? Then a move towards streaming would make sense.
We don’t feel that TV advertising is declining. Nova’s advertising revenue has been growing steadily over the last few years. Last year, the Czech streaming market was about CZK 3.5 billion in size. In five years it could be double that. This is a fairly significant source of new money that we want to tap into.
Last year, Prima took it upon itself to ban the fast-forwarding of ads on smart TV sets so that it would not lose advertising revenue. It already had a Don’t Fast-forward campaign before that, urging people not to deprive it of advertising money. You didn’t. Why didn’t you?
Prima was in a slightly different situation because it’s 100% sold out.
What does that mean?
The amount of advertising space it can sell is completely sold out. At the same time, they’re seeing more and more people fast-forwarding the ad breaks. In that context, I understand what Prima did. But it doesn’t bother us because we keep our ad space sell-out rate around 75 percent. It’s a deliberate strategy to balance the viewer experience with advertising revenue. The longer and more packed your ad breaks are, the more annoyed people get and don’t last as long.
In short, you have shorter commercial breaks so people don’t fast-forward as much.
Exactly.
Back to Voyo. Why was it important for Nova to kick-start this platform two years ago, which had been languishing for ten years? You could have said there’s no point in catching up with Netflix or HBO because they’ll always have bigger budgets anyway, and bet on an older audience that’s loyal to classic terrestrial broadcasting.
Over the last two years, it’s proven to make sense. We recently reported that Voyo has over half a million users in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We are number two behind Netflix in the Czech market and we continue to grow. No one would have expected that two years ago.
We can’t go head-to-head against multinational players. We can’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on one series of a show. Our way is to focus on local content. That means we understand the local audience, local traditions and we can tell stories in a way that makes sense to the Czechs. At the same time, we try to make our content in a form that is premium. See what our series like Případ Roubal, Král Šumavy and Iveta look like. These are big, almost cinematic titles that we deploy specifically for Voyo.
Voyo grows faster in crisis than last year
What about the economic crisis? Aren’t you worried that people will start saving money on subscriptions to similar services, which are constantly increasing?
I’m not worried about that regarding Voyo at all. We are trying to operate as a complement to the multinational players. I think foreign platforms like Netflix, HBO, Disney or SkyShowtime may have a problem. People are used to jumping between them depending on what attractive content they are offering at the time. Whereas we are the strongest Czech service, which people probably wouldn’t change.
When I look at how long subscribers stay with us, the churn rate is on par with the global Netflix. That’s a great result because Netflix has one of the lowest cancellation rates in the industry.
Clearly, when there is a crisis, people cut back on excessive spending. They go to the cinema, concerts or sports matches less. But our subscription for a month is 159 crowns. For that amount, the whole family gets a huge amount of entertainment. Now in the spring season, Voyo consumption is approaching fourteen hours a week on one account, which is two hours a day. It shows that when people cut back on leisure activities, they have more time they want to fill somehow. Think back to the covid period. There was uncertainty then too, but streaming services accelerated in the Czech Republic. Of course, we also have a scenario that foresees shrinking demand. Then we can delay the launch of the planned content a bit and wait for better times. But I don’t think that will be necessary.
We’re looking not only at how long people spend on Voyo, but also how often they come back. The more often a platform is used, the less risk of churn.
Czech Television continued to record a share above 30 percent in March this year. The deployment of the series Odznak Vysočina or the show Superlov helped to boost Nova’s prime time channel.
The Czech Television stations remained the most watched domestic television group in the over-15 audience group in full-time broadcasting in March with a share of 30.22%. Prima group defended its position as the second strongest in this target group, while Nova group recorded the highest year-on-year growth among the strongest groups. This is according to the official ATO-Nielsen Admosphere audience measurement data.
The year-on-year increase for the Nova group was also reflected in the fact that it became the newly most watched TV group in prime time in the 15+ group. In addition, it remains number one in the 15-54 and 15-69 audience categories in both day and evening viewership.
The growth of the Nova group is driven by year-on-year share improvements, particularly for Nova Cinema, Nova Fun and Nova Gold in both day and evening, as well as an improvement in the prime-time position of the main Nova channel.
Among Czech Television’s stations, the best performers year-on-year were CT2 and the sports channel CT Sport, which saw their share increase by 0.7 pp and 0.8 pp, respectively. The main channel CT1 also improved its position slightly. On the other hand, the year-on-year decline reflects the termination of the broadcasting of CT3 and the lower share of the news channel CT24, which was higher than usual in the same period last year due to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The growth of the Nova Group is mainly due to the year-on-year improvement in the shares of the Nova Cinema, Nova Fun and Nova Gold stations in both daytime and evening broadcasts, as well as the improved position of the main Nova channel in prime time.
Among Czech Television’s stations, the best performers year-on-year were CT2 and the sports channel CT Sport, which saw their share increase by 0.7 pp and 0.8 pp, respectively. The main channel CT1 also improved its position slightly. On the other hand, the year-on-year decline reflects the termination of the broadcasting of CT3 and the lower share of the news channel CT24, which was higher than usual in the same period last year due to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
CNN Prima News, the news channel, also had a slightly lower share this March than in the same month last year (this applies to all-day broadcasting, while in prime time it recorded a slight improvement). Among the Prima Group’s channels, Prima Krimi continues to grow, already reaching a share of 4% (all-day, 15+). The Prima Max, Prima Zoom and Prima Star stations are also increasing their share, while the main Prima channel remained behind its result from last March.
Among the other stations, Atmedia and Television Seznam also increased their share year-on-year (to 1.5%, all day, 15+).
The Hellspy Internet platform, which was one of the most popular czech data sharing servers, ceased its operation over the past weekend. It happened on the first day of April, just as planned. I&Q Group, as the operator of the service, will now refund people with subscriptions gradually.
Hellspy, as one of the largest data sharing servers in the Czech Republic, has been a thorn in the side of copyright protectors for quite some time. On this portal, as well as on a number of other Internet storage sites, people have been sharing movies, music, games and illegal copies of various programs.
For example, Weemazz, a company that searches for and removes films and music from online repositories, said last year that requests are sent to operators every day to remove copies of thousands of copyrighted works.
While Hellspy promptly deleted the reported copies, illegal content was still abundant on the site. An agreement last September, when the I&Q Group – the operator of the Hellshare and Hellspy online repositories – agreed with representatives of commercial TV stations to deploy filters that would automatically search for and delete illegal content, did not help much.
Amendment to the Czech Copyright Act
But the New Year was a turning point, when the aforementioned amendment to the Czech Copyright Act following the European regulation came into force. According to the amendment, the operator essentially assumes responsibility for its users – it is responsible for what data users upload to the server.
Hellspy reacted to this by scrapping searches after the new year. No matter what terms you typed into the search box on its site, all you got was a message that the file you wanted could not be found.
Considering that this year the service was only available for downloads as part of a subscription fee or for credits that users earned by uploading data, the company lost a substantial amount of funding with the new year. That’s apparently why the company has decided to cut back on operations from the coming month. In practice, this means that the service is no longer available from 1 April 2023. The website only displays information about the termination of the service and a contact form.
Even before the closure of Hellspy.cz, the operators of the service began to harass users with subscriptions about the fact that they would be refunded if they had subscribed to the service for a longer period. So it is a pro-rated amount that will be calculated on the remaining days after the first of April. So for most users, it will be tens of crowns, hundreds of crowns at most.
The Ulož.to platform, which allows uploading and downloading of films, documents and photos, may have to change its services significantly and keep a closer eye on what people upload to its repository. This was shown by the latest dispute with Ulož.to initiated by Prima TV. The Municipal Court in Prague ruled at the end of February that the platform, which is operated by petacloud, must not allow people to download the Zoo series produced for Prima by Good TV Production SE from its repository.
At the same time, Judge Filip Liška ordered petacloud to provide Prima with information about those who illegally uploaded episodes of the Zoo series to its repository, including their IP addresses and other data. “It has been proven that (Ulož.to) is committing unfair competition and infringing the plaintiff’s copyright to the series in question,” Liška said.
Ulož.to finds the court’s decision surprising and is going to appeal against it. “It is based on legislation that does not apply to Ulož.to,” believes Jan Karabina, the statutory executive of petacloud. According to him, the development of case law cannot be assessed based on non-final judgements. However, two years ago, the courts gave final judgements to ban Ulož.to from offering six films, including Pelíšky or Ostře sledované vlaky, for which Dilia holds the copyright.
Ulož.to’s business is based on providing space to store virtually anything. And anyone can download from it, either free of charge at slow speeds or fast for a fee. Experts estimate that petacloud collects hundreds of millions of crowns in fees for faster downloads. However, it is impossible to find out the exact figures because contrary to law, the company does not publish its financial statements and does not report on its performance.
Judge Liška justified the verdict on the basis of an amendment to the Copyright Act, which came into force at the beginning of this year. It provides much more protection for copyright in case of sharing over the internet and limits its abuse.
“It is a revolutionary change. The amendment says that as of January, Ulož.to cannot use the excuse that it is only an intermediary as it is a user,” explains lawyer Rudolf Leška. According to him, if a company wants to offer works for further download, it must ensure the protection of copyright.
“The amendment opens the door for authors and producers of works to bring an action against such swindlers more easily,” said another expert, František Vyskočil, representing Dilia, the collective copyright management agency. According to both, more and more copyright owners can now be expected to defend themselves against such sharing of their works. “I will be much more optimistic when clients ask me whether they should file an action,” confirms Leška.
Prima has already succeeded once, specifically in the case of the Duch series. But then it won by default because Ulož.to failed to appear in court. The court gave a default judgement and did not address the merits at all. “However, on appeal, the High Court upheld the enforceability of the judgement,” says Prima’s counsel Ludmila Kutějová. According to her, the Duch series should no longer be available for download on the Ulož.to website.
Prima filed the same action on the grounds of the illegal offering of the Slunečná series. The court has not yet heard the case. After the current success, Prima plans to continue and bring actions concerning other films and series. And in the next wave, it will also require both Ulož.to and the people who uploaded its works to the platform and thus enabled their illegal distribution to hand over the unjust enrichment. It therefore requires the platform to disclose the number of downloads or the IP addresses from where the episodes of their series were uploaded.
CinemArt has also taken the route of recovering unjust enrichment. According to its representative, Rudolf Leška, CinemArt is demanding approximately CZK 1 million for the film Šarlatán. This amount was calculated as lost profits as a result of the film, which was awarded several Czech Lions, being offered by Ulož.to for free download. “We will proceed like CinemArt and claim unjust enrichment,” Kutějová confirmed.
Prima is not alone. TV Nova has also brought actions over its series Ulice or Ordinace v růžové zahradě. The court granted its motion in January this year and issued a preliminary ruling ordering the platform to prevent any downloading of the series. However, petacloud ignored the ruling according to Nova, which is why Nova turned to the enforcement agent. “Our enforcement motion was granted and the operator of Ulož.to was fined for not respecting the preliminary ruling,” said Zdeňka Zimová, a senior lawyer at Nova. However, Karabina said that they had appealed against the enforcement decision and were confident that they would succeed, just as they had reportedly succeeded in overturning other preliminary rulings.
Ulož.to is not the only platform where you can download films, TV series or audiobooks. However, the owners of copyrighted works do not have such disputes with them. “Ulož.to is the biggest, they are the most visible,” explains Leška.
It is also true that, for example, Hellspy and Hellshare entered into an agreement with Prima, Nova and Óčko last year to deploy automated filters to prevent pirate distribution of recordings and films. A month ago, Hellspy announced that it would cease operations because of the new law.
Film distributor CinemArt has won another round of litigation against Ulož.to. It concerned Šarlatán movie, which Ulož.to was offering for illegal online viewing in 2020. CinemArt subsequently blocked everything through a preliminary injunction through the court. However, Ulož.to then sued and claimed damages. The city court has now rejected its claim.
The latest judgment is not yet final. According to it, Ulož.to is to pay CinemArt’s legal costs as well.
Lawyers of Uloz.to cloud, a. s., otherwise demanded about 800 thousand crowns from CinemArt in this part of the case. They justified the amount on the grounds that the company was forced by the court to refrain from allowing any digital downloads of the Šarlatán movie because of the distributor, thus incurring large costs.
Specifically, this included, among other things, having to hire people to search for files with the word “Šarlatn” / “Charlatan” in them, review them, or block them. According to Ulož.all this was done over many months.
CinemArt has long rejected the counterparty’s demand for any compensation. It insisted that the image was and is offered illegally on the Ulož.to website and the court’s decision to block everything was correct, complying with Czech and European law. He also pointed out that the distribution of films is not a cheap affair and it is customary to pay those who own the copyright to watch them.
The battle over interpretation
After the first decision of the City Court – i.e. after December 2020 – the High Court in Prague intervened in the “Šarlatán” / “Charlatan” case, which in turn upheld the position of Ulož.to, which is generally based on the right to freedom in the online space.
On procedural grounds, the High Court overturned the City Court’s decision, stating that similar cases must be better and more precisely formulated in the future.
It was on the basis of this legal opinion that Ulož.to subsequently sued CinemArt for the aforementioned sum of eight hundred thousand.
The Šarlatán movie is otherwise still available for download. “Independently of the latest court decision, the litigation regarding this illegal offer continues. We continue to seek an end to this illegal activity,” said CinemArt spokesman Petr Slavik, adding that a final decision “will be a long time coming”.
For three quarters of a year now there has been a ban on skipping ads in the back view of IPTV operators in the broadcasts of Prima group TV stations. What the measure has brought and what the next steps will be, representatives of the Prima group explain.
The MediaGuru.cz editorial team talked to Lukáš Kubát, Petr Milo and Michal Stárek from the Prima Group about the possibilities of blocking skipping ads and further plans in the field of internet television. They assess the step, which the Prima Group has taken on 1 June 2022, as a success. “We have saved over 20 thousand advertising GRPs. That’s about 150 million crowns,” they say. Prima representatives also spoke about how they plan to implement the content of the new Prima+ video library into the operators’ offers.
On the first of June it will be a year since operators had to deploy one of the solutions you suggested regarding skipping ad blocks on Prima Group channels. How do you evaluate this step from your point of view in hindsight?
Lukáš Kubát: We see it positively, because we have saved the GRPs from which we finance our production, and the GRPs are no longer getting lost somewhere. We have secured the monetization of the viewer because IPTV is growing and gaining importance. If we let that go, like timeshare viewing, the problem gets exponentially bigger. In 2021 we lost around 30k GRPs, by 2022 it would be 40k. The increase is dozens percent if we wouldn’t act. By stepping on the brake and asserting our rights, the market has somehow gotten used to it. It was a huge drama, but I think the emotions have subsided and the operators can see for themselves that as long as they implement solutions that improve the user experience (e.g. shortened ad block, fast-forwarding of content, 60-second window with the ability to fast-forward ads at the start of viewing, accurate show starts), nothing terrible happens. We understand that this has been difficult from the operators’ perspective, and we appreciate their constructive engagement with us.
You obviously commend the move as a good decision, but the operators were not so happy. They mostly agree that this is a constraint that severely limits viewer satisfaction. One of them even called the move illegal.
Lukáš Kubát: We see it as a way to re-establish the value of our content. It was kind of a preface to our VOD platform. If our content is to have any value, we can’t give it to people for free, because in the world of content, the person who created it has to live off something, and that’s either advertising or subscriptions. If I’m putting an ad out there and someone says, “Hey, don’t watch that ad. Just look at the content.” – then it stops working for me financially. That’s why I’m glad that today we can offer our viewers the Prima+ service, where the Premium tariff allows you to watch our content without ads.
The obligation to block ad skipping, or your agreement with the operators, has been in place for about three quarters of a year at this point. So is this model set up well in your opinion?
Lukáš Kubát: From the feedback from operators, we see that the most dissatisfied are those who have not implemented any improved solution that Prima allows, and have only disabled forward scrolling for both the program and ads. I would imagine that some of the larger operators will click something in their platform and say, “Sure, don’t skip the ad, skip the content.” That it would be that simple. It shows the less flexible approach of some of the big ones, and conversely the flexibility of the small operators.
Petr Míl: We have provided compensation for the ad skipping ban and some technical means to improve the user experience from a different perspective. We have offered operators precise start times for shows and the user doesn’t have to search for them. We also made it possible to skip ads after a few minutes.
Lukáš Kubát: When we talk to operators after nine months, this is the point they really appreciate. The operator says: Leaving aside everything that bothers me, the punctual start of shows really improves the viewer experience. When a viewer watches a show and has the option to skip, finding the exact beginning is a bit more annoying than having the show start exactly where it’s supposed to start.
I would go back to April last year, when the Chamber of Commerce held a meeting with representatives of some of the operators and invited journalists. One of the visibly dissatisfied operators was 4net.tv, which even then expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that this was a one-sided solution that had not been discussed with them. This is also confirmed by T-Mobile, which complains that there is a lack of sufficient discussion between media houses and operators to address the issue. The operator has repeatedly asked for standardisation of the technical solution and approach to playing advertising blocks, but unfortunately this has not happened. Why?
Petr Míl: Because standardization could not be found, we came up with our own solution and we offer that it can easily become a standard.
When I followed the discussion and the criticisms at the time, my understanding was that the operators did not have a manual that clearly told them what to do and that, on the contrary, these conditions were set out, I don’t know if I’m using the right word, in a lax way, and that each operator had to deal with it on his own.
Lukáš Kubát: We had it described in general terms, because the brief was simple: disable ad skipping. Some operators made it a problem because we found out that they buy the platform somewhere, for example, and therefore they have to have a detailed specification for their supplier and they have to set it up. I understand that it would be easier if there was a technical bible that described the terms exactly. We told the operators how we wanted to do it, but we conducted it as a dialogue. It’s hard to please everyone when introducing a new solution. If we came in and said, here’s the documentation, we’d be looking forward in nine months when it’s done. We said to the operators clearly, the problem is with you and you are allowing customers to skip advertising in timeshifts, so please prevent it. The discussion has been going on for two or three years and historically there has been an effort to get operators to ban this.
But nothing has been actively done about it…
Lukas Kubát: We told the operators that we would give them the technical cooperation to say where the pause starts and where it ends. We will “tag” your program and you have to tell us where the standard is. We found two in the world. One is the API and the other is SCTE-35 (the markup that US regional TV used to use, ed.). You tell us what kind of tagging you would like and we will give you the technical cooperation. And the operators then make sure that when that marking occurs, it’s impossible to skip the commercial.
Popis tabulky: Improving the ranking of Prima Group stations on operators’ menus in 2023
Popis tabulky: Evaluating the solution to the ban on skipping ads in delayed viewership
So, the current situation is that this obligation somehow works for operators, and one of them even allows you to insert online advertising, which is the optimal solution for you. What is your next plan and where should it go from here? Is it optimal for you to have multiple solutions or would only one model be optimal for you? T-Mobile has written to our editorial team that from June 1 they plan to extend the ability to skip an ad block after three minutes to four.
Lukáš Kubát: We announced this plan, where we would go for the possibility of skipping ads after three minutes, which is half of the ad break, to operators at the Chamber of Commerce in September 2021. Here we also mentioned that we plan to increase from three to four minutes in the future. There is no reason why an IPTV viewer should see fewer ads than any other. We want to keep it at eight minutes for now. For operators who will have the option of embedded online advertising, the limit will not change and will remain at five minutes.
Operators also said that their statistics show a drop in the viewership of Prima Group programmes in back-to-back viewing, but did not give any specific figures as this is internal know-how. Do you have any statistics in this respect?
Lukáš Kubát: We do not have data from the operators. They mention it, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish in their view when it is TV season and when it is the so-called off season. Operators saw a decline in the summer after the introduction of this condition, which was on June 1, but this is a decline that happens every year and should be compared year by year rather than month by month. We don’t see a significant drop in viewership from the data we get from Nielsen. We see that Prima’s viewership is growing and that we have grown from a share of 25% to 27% in the 15+ audience group. We see that IPTV is not growing as fast, it’s flattened out more. We are seeing some impact but it is not material. We are growing as a group and we are happy.
Petr Míl: There may have been a slight change in user behaviour where, if they have disabled the ability to skip ads, they can watch our show live and on a competitor’s TV they can watch the show from a recording and skip the ad. For us, viewership remains because whether the viewer bites into the show live or in delayed viewership is irrelevant to us.
The chart you presented to us shows that in the 15+ group you have managed to reduce the gap between you and the Nova group over the years. Clearly, then, you don’t see this as a fundamentally bad decision. So did everything turn out as you expected for you?
Lukáš Kubát: Exactly. 22,000 GRPs saved is approximately 150 million crowns for us, so in six months we are about half of what we set out to do. We said we were losing around 300 million, so we consider that number confirmed.
I also asked on the internet about customer satisfaction of individual operators, who understandably see it as viewer discomfort. Generally speaking, those who don’t care or can tolerate this restriction are very few. Quite often there have been comments that the viewer has stopped watching Prima altogether, or doesn’t understand why this step is being taken when there are usually more than a hundred programmes available on pay services.
Petr Míl: The basic view is that we are funded only by advertising money. In order to produce shows that users watch, we need them to watch advertising. By skipping advertising, they have made it impossible for us to fund production.
Lukáš Kubát: It’s a tough view of the viewer and I can put myself in their shoes. In their campaigns, the operators enticed viewers to skip the ads. But they didn’t have the rights to buy it. So it’s a problem on the part of the operators who historically have not informed their customers correctly. The operator said: “I’ll get a new customer from terrestrials, they can watch shows on delay, skip ads, and save a lot of time.” No one addressed how the operator would deal with Prima. The viewer doesn’t see it.
And, as we have already said, there will certainly also be a difference in the perception of these moves by customers of different operators. If viewers are with operators that have fully integrated all the options we have enabled for IPTV operators (such as sledovani.tv), they certainly don’t feel the discomfort of watching shows as strongly as viewers of operators that have not taken advantage of these options. However, we believe that the situation will improve in this respect in the future.
Popis tabulky: Daily viewership results in 15+, source: ATO – Nielsen Admosphere, live + TS0-3, as of 1. 3. 2023
The ability to rewind is undoubtedly one of the benefits of IPTV or internet TV, so you can’t blame customers for not liking it when people have this functionality taken away.
Petr Míl: It should be emphasised that we do not prohibit rewinding of programmes, we prohibit rewinding of advertising. The fact that some operators have done this by banning replays of our programmes altogether is their decision.
O2 has solved the ban on skipping commercials by banning the ability to rewind altogether. At the beginning of last year, there was already an information bar on your stations that the operator’s clients would lose your programmes within a few weeks, which in the end did not happen. So what are your current relations with one of the biggest operators on the market?
Lukáš Kubát: We are glad that we finally signed the contract. In February we did not have it yet. But the essence of the problem was that they were distributing our channels without a valid contract.
This big operator was distributing your channels without a contract? That’s hard to believe.
Lukáš Kubát:We couldn’t agree on new terms. One of them was the implementation of limiting ad skipping. The contract said that we would implement it within a year. We said to them, “You are aware that we are implementing a ban on skipping.” And that was actually one of the points of the conflict we had.
Michal Stárek: All the operators have committed to these conditions by a certain date, and only O2 said no.
So where do your relationships stand now?
Lukáš Kubát: We have a contract, the relations are normalised and good.
Okay, but as far as the positioning of your programmes in the O2 TV offer is concerned, it’s not quite optimal. After the inclusion of the channels of the Nova group in better programming positions, your stations were moved to worse preferences.
Lukáš Kubát: We cannot influence the operator to place us on particular positions that we have not agreed on. In particular, the operator O2 perceives the situation in such a way that if it cannot offer the viewer an improved quality of content or user experience, it will say that it does not want to have these programmes at the top. So, while we are in the top 30, we are not quite in the premium positions. O2 and rival group Nova have the same owner, taking out our positions without the ability to negotiate and replacing them with Nova group channels seems to us to be problematic from a competition perspective.
Petr Míl: Unlike O2, we have agreed with some operators to place our channels in better programming positions.
I will ask about that in a moment. Can you tell us what the distribution agreements with the operator generally contain? I understand you can’t comment on specific agreements with individual operators, but can you say what you are looking out for in them?
Lukáš Kubát:To put it simply, we sell our channels. We sell them either in live mode or in delayed viewing mode. IPTV has both contracts because it offers timeshift and within that there is a start over, a seven-day timeshift, and of course there are defined terms and conditions on how the content can be handled. For example, it treats how many simultaneous streams can be broadcast, how many devices can be registered, etc.
My colleague indicated a moment ago that several operators have moved your thematic clones to more attractive positions this year. How have you done that?
Lukáš Kubát: We offer a discount for premium positioning of our programmes, but we will not disclose the amount.
Let’s go back to O2 TV. You have a contract, but the relationships are probably not the best right now. Are you still going to negotiate with them?
Lukáš Kubát: We definitely want to build long-term relationships with operators that work, and we are interested in having our channels in the top positions, but it’s always a question of agreement. I believe that this will improve in the future.
In our interview, you mentioned your new video library prima+ several times. Will you try to implement its content directly into operators’ offers in the future?
Lukáš Kubát: The new service allows us to expand the range of content we can offer to the viewer. Naturally, we want to make this content available to operators. We will look for a form of cooperation and we are talking to operators about what is a good business relationship, setup, display, integration.
So you’re at the beginning…
Lukáš Kubát: Exactly. We want our content to reach the viewers and the operator is the aggregator that has the ability to offer that to the viewers. Viewers should be able to watch ZOO in preview or watch it without commercials, both options are offered by Prima+. If a seven-day archive is not enough and he wants to watch all the episodes, he has the option. We want to expand our relevance with operators and offer viewers the widest possible range of audience favourites.
Police officers from Poland’s Central Bureau for Combatting Cybercrime (CBZC) have closed one of the largest pirate site in the country offering viewers movies and series.
According to the anti-piracy body Signal, last November CBZC arrested a 28-year-old man responsible for the technical service of the site, named Zaukaj.vip. Then in January it also detained the owner and originator of the site, with the 33-year-old man in addition being charged with fraud.
Commenting on the development, Piotr Wójtów from the Anti-Piracy Section at Canal+ Polska, a member of the Signal Association, which brings together broadcasters and distributors of video content in the fight against piracy, said: “Zalukaj.vip was one of the largest pirate websites disseminating movies and series. Its activity was based solely on the unlawful distribution of audiovisual content. This resulted in huge financial losses on the part of entities offering legal access to films and series in Poland.
“Joint actions of the victims and law enforcement authorities led to the closure of the website and the arrest of those responsible for its operation. This shows that the fight against piracy is taken seriously, and the people running such services must take into account the disclosure of their identity and the consequences”.
Teresa Wierzbowska, the president of Signal, meanwhile pointed out the inevitability of a penalty. She added that an additional warning for pirates should also be the verdict heard by the owner of another website, which was ordered by the court in Bialystok to pay over PLN47 million to copyright holders in 2021.
Signal points out that Zalukaj.vip was illegally disseminating video content since at least February 2020.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) said it has shut down an illegal video-streaming site that was racking up millions of monthly visits.
ACE, whose members include the major studios, said that Streamzz, an Ahlen, Germany-based global file hosting service, was drawing more than 7 million monthly visits to its ill-gotten streaming video gains, with the second most visits coming from the United States.
The site had been operating since 2019 and had hosted more than 15,000 TV show and 75,000 movies for illegal streaming, supplying more than 60 pirate websites, ACE said.
ACE said it got an assist in the takedown from member Constantin Film. “Piracy continues to undermine the legal market and the investment into new and exciting content,” Constantin executive VP Philipp Wohlfrom said.
“The shutdown of Streamzz is fresh proof that no one in the content piracy ecosystem — whether they’re a streaming service, video streaming host or anything in between — is above the law,” said Jan van Voorn, executive VP of the Motion Picture Association and head of ACE.
European broadcasters, represented by the Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe (ACT) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), have backed WIPO Member States to finalise the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty.
According to ACT and EBU, the treaty would harmonise the anti-piracy protections for broadcasters by setting minimum standards internationally as well as perform as an anti-piracy instrument to protect programming.
In a joint statement the pair commented, “Protecting broadcasting organizations from illegitimate actors has never been more important: global piracy significantly undermines the commercial value and exploitation of live and premium content. This content is a core pillar of media (re-)financing and remits, so they must be able to act quickly and efficiently to fight piracy worldwide.
“The Second Revised Draft Text for the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty (SCCR/43/3) is a balanced instrument aimed at protecting the programme-carrying signal. The revisions allow for a common understanding of the scope of protection and provide efficient tools to fight piracy, both on domestic and international levels.
They added, “the signatories are of the opinion that the Second Revised Draft Text for the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty covers the principles necessary for the legal protection of programme carrying signals; and, therefore, could serve as a basis for finalising the text of the WIPO Broadcasting Organizations Treaty in view of convening a Diplomatic Conference for the adoption of said treaty.”
ACT and EBU said European broadcasters will continue to support WIPO’s battle against piracy globally.
The EU’s DSA/DMA Package entered into force at the end of 2022. The Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act aim to create a safer digital space where fundamental rights of users are protected and to establish a level playing field for businesses.
The Digital Services Act (DSA)
The DSA entered into force on November 16, 2022 in the EU. The Digital Services Act includes rules for online intermediary services, which millions of Europeans use every day. The obligations of different online players match their role, size and impact in the online ecosystem.
For the first time a common set of rules on intermediaries’ obligations and accountability across the single market will open up new opportunities to provide digital services across borders, while ensuring a high level of protection to all users, no matter where they live in the EU. The Digital Services Act significantly improves the mechanisms for the removal of illegal content and for the effective protection of users’ fundamental rights online, including the freedom of speech. It also creates a stronger public oversight of online platforms, in particular for platforms that reach more than 10% of the EU’s population.
Here are key ways, rights and obligations which are newly provided via the DSA:
1) Protecting us from dangerous goods and illegal content
Without DSA there would be no consistent flagging system for when you see illegal content, goods or services online. The DSA makes it easier for you to report illegal content, such as hate speech, and goods such as counterfeit products by introducing mandatory user-friendly flagging systems. According to the DSA, platforms need to process alerts in a timely and diligent manner and keep you updated and to provide you with clear information about whom you’re buying goods or services from online.
2) Helping us tackle cyber bullying
Cyber bullying and cyber violence are an increasing problem for children and adults alike. The DSA introduces stronger protections for people targeted by online harassment and bullying. This includes making sure any non-consensual private images and other abusive, illegal content that are shared can be quickly flagged by users.
3) Limiting targeted advertising
The DSA introduces transparency around advertising, making sure it is clearly labelled, and information is available about who is placing the ad and why you are seeing it. It also introduces a ban on certain types of advertising on online platforms, like advertising based on sensitive data categories including sexuality, religion or race, and a complete ban on targeted advertising of children based on their personal data.
4) Helping us to understand and challenge content moderation decisions
At the moment, if a platform decides to take down something you post, it is hard to contest that decision. The DSA will allow us to challenge platforms through an easy-to-use, free-of-charge complaint mechanism.
5) Simplifying terms and conditions
The DSA ensures that very large online platforms (those with over 45 million users in the EU) provide concise and unambiguous summaries of their terms and conditions, so we all know what we are accepting.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA)
The DMA entered into force on November 1, 2022 in the EU. The DMA aims to secure fairness in digital economy and establishes certain restrictions and obligations for big tech. The Digital Markets Act establishes a set of narrowly defined objective criteria for qualifying a large online platform as a so-called “gatekeeper”. This allows the DMA to remain well targeted to the problem that it aims to tackle as regards large, systemic online platforms. The DMA will be applicable as of beginning of May 2023. Within two months, companies providing core platform services will have to notify the Commission and provide all relevant information. The Commission will then have two months to adopt a decision designating a specific gatekeeper. The designated gatekeepers will have a maximum of six months after the Commission decision to ensure compliance with the obligations foreseen in the DMA.
Here are key ways, rights and obligations which are newly provided via the DMA:
1) Business users who depend on gatekeepers to offer their services in the single market will have a fairer business environment.
2) Innovators and technology start-ups will have new opportunities to compete and innovate in the online platform environment without having to comply with unfair terms and conditions limiting their development.
3) Consumers will have more and better services to choose from, more opportunities to switch their provider if they wish so, direct access to services, and fairer prices.
4) Gatekeepers will keep all opportunities to innovate and offer new services. They will simply not be allowed to use unfair practices towards the business users and customers that depend on them to gain an undue advantage.
The DMA and its main benefits for Users:
1) Empowered citizens and users
Today, platforms optimise the presentation of information to capture attention and drive revenue, but their users are often unaware of how their systems sort content and how platforms profile them. The manipulation of recommender systems and abuse of advertising systems can fuel dangerous disinformation and propagation of illegal content.
2) Quality digital services at lower price
The systemic role of a few online platforms affects the lives of billions of users and millions of companies in Europe. Some companies have a major impact on, control the access to, and are entrenched in digital markets. They can impose unfair take-it-or-leave-it conditions on both their business users and consumers.
The Prima Group is now the holder of an 80% stake in Impression Media, which is mainly active in the online advertising market. It is already the owner of Media Club.
Prima Group has completed the acquisition of the media group Media Bohemia. It now holds an 80% stake in the online media agency Impression Media. This strengthens Prima’s Media Club representation in the field of online and programmatic advertising.
Impression Media represents more than 153 websites from all segments, which reach over 6.6 million users per month on the Czech market, and thus ranks among the top 3 players in the online advertising segment. Thanks to the acquisition, the Prima Group’s portfolio will also be expanded by the marketing agency Programmatic Media, which offers programmatic planning, web development and web analytics, social media marketing, PR communication, production and brand employment. The agreement also includes the websites Femina.cz, Autoweb.cz, Magazinzahrada.cz, Living.cz, which will be newly integrated into the Prima Group’s online editorial team.
“The Media Bohemia media group is optimizing its product portfolio and in the coming period will focus on the development of key brands such as Rádio Blaník, Hitrádio, Fajn rádio and Rock rádio and digital activities related to them,”
Miroslav Hrnko, CEO of Media Bohemia, explains.
“This is a strategic move by the Prima Group. Our sales agency Media Club is a market leader in the field of television and radio advertising. With the acquisition of Impression Media, we are significantly strengthening our online advertising business and will become one of the leading players on the Czech market. Thanks to our rich portfolio of websites, we can offer clients precise targeting of campaigns to a selected segment,”
says Vladimír Pořízek, Commercial Director of Prima Group.
Impression Media will be newly incorporated under the Media Club commercial representation and will continue to provide the same services to its clients as before. Roman Stolejda will remain the company’s managing director, who will be joined in the position by Petr Hatlapatka, commercial director of Media Club’s online division. As part of the acquisition, the 40-strong team will be relocated to the Prima Group address. Roman Stolejda (13%) and David Bauckmann (7%) remain minority shareholders in the company.
Petr Miláček, director of analysis at the Prima Group, will join Programmatic Media’s executive team and will focus on the company’s development in the area of media planning. “We would like to offer smaller clients who do not have their own media agency a full service, including media planning and campaign implementation. That is why we will take advantage of Petr Miláček’s extensive experience and plan to strengthen this area,” adds Vladimír Pořízek.
Media Club was established in 2013 and represents the Prima Group in advertising sales on nine TV channels (Prima, CNN Prima News, Prima Cool, Prima Max, Prima Krimi, Prima Love, Prima Zoom, Prima Show and Prima Star), as well as in the Prima Group’s online projects, print magazines, public events and esports in conjunction with PLAYzone. Media Club also continues to represent the music stations of the Óčko group, the channels of the Barrandov group, the Paramount Network, the children’s channel Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. and the channels represented by Atmedia Czech. Among radio stations, it represents Impuls radio, Europe 2, Frekvenci 1, Radio Kiss, Radio Beat, Country Radio, Signal Radio, Radio SPIN, Radio 1, Rock Zone, Radio Bonton, Dance Radio and Český Impuls. Newly added to its portfolio are websites commercially represented by Impression Media.
Hellspy, the internet data sharing platform, has decided to be closed as of next month. This is a direct response to the amendment to the copyright law, which has been in force since the beginning of this year. The creators have informed users of the service in an email, saying that they will be refunding their subscription money.
Hellspy, as one of the largest data sharing servers in the Czech Republic, has been a thorn in the side of copyright protectors for some time. On this portal, as well as on a number of other Internet storage sites, people have been sharing movies, music, games and illegal copies of various programs.
For example, Weemazz, a company that searches for and removes films and music from online repositories, said last year that requests are sent to operators every day to remove copies of thousands of copyrighted works.
While Hellspy promptly deleted the reported copies, illegal content was still abundant on the site. An agreement last September, when the I&Q Group – the operator of the Hellshare and Hellspy online repositories – agreed with representatives of commercial TV stations to deploy filters that would automatically search for and delete illegal content, did not help much.
Accountability for users
But the new year was a turning point, when the aforementioned amendment to the Czech Copyright Act following the European regulation came into force. According to the amendment, the operator essentially assumes responsibility for its users – it is responsible for what data users upload to the server.
Hellspy reacted to this by scrapping searches after the new year. No matter what terms you typed into the search box on its site, all you got was a message that the file you wanted could not be found.
Considering that this year the service was only available for downloads as part of a subscription fee or for credits that users earned by uploading data, the company lost a substantial amount of funding with the new year. That’s apparently why the company has decided to cut back on operations from the coming month.
It will return the money
“Due to the legislative situation in the Czech Republic and in order to make the Hellspy service as transparent as possible to its users, we would like to inform you that the Hellspy service will be discontinued on April 1, 2023,” the operators of the service wrote to their users.
People who have subscribed to the service for a longer period will not lose their money. “We also want to inform you of your entitlement to a pro-rata refund of your purchased unlimited download,” the email sent out reads. People can request a refund directly on the Hellspy.cz website.
