Latest domestic film production to cost $12 million
On May 8, Jerzy Kawalerowicz will start filming "Quo Vadis," the biggest Polish film production since Jerzy Hoffman's "With Fire and Sword."
Kawalerowicz's film, based on the Nobel Prize winning book of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz, will cost $12 million, $2 million more than the total production cost of "With Fire and Sword."
A chronicle of early Christianity during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, "Quo Vadis" is scheduled to appear in September 2001 and already has a web page: www.quo-vadis.pl. The project's sponsors are Kredyt Bank and Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA).
The movie is being produced by Chronos Film and co-produced by Telewizja Polska (TVP); HBO; Kredyt Bank; the Kadr film studio; Agencja Produkcji Filmowej and WFDiF, a documentary and film production studio. At last week's press conference, Kawalerowicz said he would aim for a close interpretation of the original.
"My intention is to leave some kind of Polish mark on the adaptation," he said. Sienkiewicz's "Quo Vadis" has been used as the basis for films since the beginning of cinema history; one of the earliest movie adaptations was a 1901 Zecca production.
Nowe Panstwo, a right-of-center weekly put out by publishing house Srebrna, increased its circulation from 18,000 to 25,000 copies and adopted a smaller format three weeks ago. "Without changing the format, you cannot count on entering the advertising market and increasing sales," said Adam Lipinski, Nowe Panstwo's publisher. "Of course you won't be successful automatically, but the first signs of improvement are there."
So far, sales of the 3-year-old paper, which covers politics, culture and society, haven't exceeded 10,000 copies. According to the publisher, the format change might be a good start for creating a third weekly to join Wprost (324,263 average circulation) and Polityka (286,520 daily circulation). "There is still room for another large weekly on the market. I hope that it might be Nowe Panstwo," Lipinski said. "We are looking for an investor (so as) to gradually increase circulation and in a sense re-launch our publication."
RTL7 is being reborn this week. As of April 17, the company introduced a new programming format that will prove the station has "evolved in a better" way, according to RTL7's Director General Dirk Gerkens. "After four years, we haven't been successful," Gerkens said. The station's new programming, aimed at young Polish families, will emphasize local productions. RTL7 will invest zl. 20 million ($4.9 million) in local productions this year and another zl. 60 million ($14.6 million) in 2001.
"We noticed in many markets that the taste of viewers is going more toward local production," Gerkens said. "So we decided to reposition programming and base it on Polish productions, although we haven't done that before." The station plans another wave of new programming in September.
"Our goal is to achieve 7% of audience share by the end of this year," he said. In March 2000, RTL7 had 3% of the market share compared to tvn's 13.4%, Polsat's 23.8% and TVP1's 26.2%, according to Taylor Nelson Sofres OBOP, a public opinion surveyor.
RTL7 is not the first to up its Polish programming. Canal+Polska, a pay-TV station, has spent zl. 61 million ($14.9 million) on Polish movie productions, and spent $5 million last year on sitcoms and documentaries.
While planning to increase its market share, RTL7 will have to watch its more direct competitors, too. tvn, which recently gained a new investor, SBS Broadcasting, now owned by United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC), has based its programming on domestic productions from the beginning. Ryszard Sybilski, a tvn supervisory board member and programming coordinator says more Polish productions won't help RTL7 improve its ratings.
"All that Gerkens can do is to make his station (into) niche TV with, at the most, 4.25% of the market," he said. With new players TV4, which replaced Nasza TV and Polsat2 April 1, and Catholic station Telewizja Familijna, to be launched in a few months, competition for control over viewers' imagination can only become fiercer. As Alain Budzyk, the programming director at Canal+ Polska, put it, "it's yet to be seen which of the existing stations will lose some of their percentages to new players."
Last Monday, Cyfra+ introduced four interactive music listening channels. According to Paulina Krasinska, press spokeswoman for Cyfra+, the four channels have various programs featuring music that ranges from dance to country. One of the programs is all Chopin, all the time, something Cyfra+ claims is a first the world over.
The music provider for the Cyfra+ platform is the French firm MultiMusic.
Cyfra+ plans to develop its interactive music channels further. It will inevitably have to face its competitor, Wizja TV, which has similar plans. "We are planning to introduce this," said Dorota Zawadzka, head of corporate relations for UPC, Wizja TV's parent company.
For the time being, Zawadzka could not say how much investment or in what time frame Wizja will introduce interactive television or what its contents will be. She did, however, acknowledge the need to get this kind of service going for the company's approximately 1 million subscribers. "We know that interactivity is very important," she said.
Chris Rivituso contributed to this story
