Continued from Part 1.

Moving to your digital ecosystem, PPF Group recently noted that Oneplay is roughly 1.5 times larger than Netflix in the Czech market. Netflix has global scale and an engineering army; Oneplay has hyper-local dominance. What is the shelf life of this advantage, and how long can local content keep global giants at bay?

The "shelf life" framing assumes our advantage is something the global platforms can eventually buy or build their way past. I don’t see it like that. Our advantage is years and years of trusted brands - Nova, Markíza, PRO TV, bTV, POP TV, RTL - and the local stories in fiction, entertainment, news, sport and talent in people that come with them.

When you give local audiences a properly built local product that will trigger viewer’s intrinsic emotions, it’s difficult to beat.


Oneplay has strictly avoided distributing its content on YouTube to maintain total revenue and platform control. While this protects subscription margins, does it risk cutting off top-of-funnel discovery for younger audiences, and how do you replace that organic discovery mechanism?

We're not absent from where young audiences are, we are deliberate about which assets generate revenue inside Oneplay and which assets generate awareness outside it. Our news, our short-form video, our talent, our reality-show moments - all of those living on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, generating reach. Love Island Czechia and Slovakia produced some of the largest TikTok engagement of any local format in our region. What stays inside Oneplay and Voyo is the premium long-form, the content people subscribe for. Discovery is healthy because we own the biggest TV networks in our markets.


PPF announced that Romania—via PRO TV—is the first major target for replicating the Czech Oneplay ecosystem model, followed by Slovakia. What specific strategic and commercial modifications are you making to the framework to ensure a successful rollout in the Romanian market?

PRO TV is the strongest commercial brand in the country, so this isn't pure replication of the Czech model - it's a Romania-first build. The priority is to deliver the best possible Romanian viewer experience: best Romanian content, best UX, best product, best ad experience. We focus on advertising tiers from the start to calibrate them with Romanian appetite.

PRO TV already has the audience trust. Our job is to wrap that trust in the best Romanian streaming product on the market. That is the standard we're holding ourselves to.


Looking across your entire CEE footprint, what do the spring results tell you about the current balance between high-budget local fiction versus live, trusted news and event programming, i.e. sports? Which genre is proving to be the more efficient engine for linear ad monetization and what were your most successful shows across CME markets?

All three legs of the stool carry their weight, and our strategy depends on having all of them. News delivers predictable, premium, brand-safe reach every week, that's the bedrock for advertisers. Sport adds the spike and the cultural moment: football in Romania, handball in Croatia, ice hockey in Czechia, volleyball in Bulgaria. These cultural differences are the beauty of our region and example how geography matters. Local fiction is what builds frequency, intimacy and emotional attachment - the reason a viewer comes back tomorrow.

The spring confirmed several things: prestige Czech drama is having a moment, with Studna (The Well) and Král Šumavy (The King of Šumava) excelling at the Czech Lions Awards. Let’s Dance in Slovakia being a cultural phenomenon, together with family daily series Sľub (The Promise) and history saga Dunaj (Danube at Your Service) they dominate the market. bTV Bulgaria launched its first scripted drama in a decade, Hope Faith Love. Kmetija (The Farm) leading the primetime in Slovenia, Gospodin Savršeni (The Bachelor) strong in Croatia. Romania’s Got Talent is the largest entertainment audience in the Romanian market this season, on a format PRO TV has owned for years.


TV Markíza in Slovakia recently launched Rýchlovky, a short-form news format on TikTok adapted from a successful TV Nova concept. Are you seeing short-form social media news drive actual subscription conversion back to your paid platforms, or is it purely a brand-awareness play for Gen Z and are you planning similar formats for other CME territories?

Younger audiences consume news differently, on different platforms, in different formats. It's primarily about building habit and trust with a generation that will be our paying audience tomorrow - and yes, we are seeing it pull traffic back into our owned environments. We're actively testing short-forms, social-native formats in all CME markets so you can expect more.


You recently stated in Cannes that CME is a broadcaster that is "not only commercially successful, but also respected... for producing responsible, meaningful content." Historically, social impact programming has been viewed as a public broadcaster mandate—how do you intend to make the new Social Impact Center’s slate financially sustainable and attractive to commercial advertisers? How do you plan to scale these formats across the CME footprint?

I don’t agree with the premise. Socially relevant content isn't a separate category we have to make financially viable - it's something CME has been doing successfully for years. Recent example being new series Monyová on Czech Oneplay - six episodes inspired by the life and death of writer Simona Monyová is a serious treatment of domestic violence that performs as premium drama. However, with Social Impact Center we approach it differently, it is designed to be operating similarly to a foundation, meaning that the intended impact there, e.g. reducing stigma around mental health issues in Croatia, is a primary driver for commissioning the content. We perceive this as part of our charitable activities and create partnership networks around those titles.


Are you measuring success by traditional audience share and streaming views, or are you introducing new ESG-driven KPIs into CME’s executive dashboard?

The financial and audience metrics are the lifeblood and we measure them rigorously: linear share, total reach, daily active users on Voyo and Oneplay, subscriber growth, churn… Those are not going anywhere - they're how a media company stays a media company.

Alongside them, we are also actively engaging in continuously increasing the journalistic standards across newsrooms. We track carbon footprint of our productions and actively work on introducing sustainable practices, we intentionally increase the volume of content accessible viewers with disabilities, and we also work with non-profit organizations to support them either through donated media-time, narrative driving positive change within our shows or direct volunteering of our employees.


Looking ahead across all the themes we’ve discussed—from structural change and digital transformation to content strategy and societal impact—what do you want CME to be known for in five to ten years from now, both in the industry and among audiences?

The next decade in European media will reward the companies that understand culture as their compounding asset, not their constraint. We are uniquely positioned to be the leading regional group that proves it.

I want every viewer in our markets – Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Romania & Moldova, Slovakia and Slovenia - to feel that CME's brands are the most trusted, most relevant, most loved storytellers in their country, on whatever screen they choose. Linear, streaming, mobile, social.

I want the industry to look at Central and Eastern Europe and say: that's how a regional group is supposed to work. A platform where six markets share scale, technology, talent, and ambition while keeping the local creative voice that audiences fell in love with in the first place. Local stories. World-class craft. A modern digital business. Editorial standards that earn trust. That is what CME is for, and that is what I want it to be famous for.