Przychoda:

Warsaw-based Fincast is one of three media companies planning to launch a new TV station this year. Fincast, however, is determined to stand out from competitors by avoiding violent programming on the new venture, Tele 5. The channel, set to be available via satellite and on cable this quarter, will broadcast mostly documentaries and film series purchased from European broadcasters such as BBC, ZDF, RAI or TF 1. Tele 5 could have been launched two years ago but Fincast, a subsidiary of Milan-based Eurocast Italia (EI), failed to find substantial financial backing for the venture. This time access to capital should be easier because Fincast and EI plan to buy into publicly listed Pekpol, a maker of meat-processing equipment, and the new entity will be able to tap the equity market. The planned purchase of a 64% stake in Pekpol will be completed thanks to the financial involvement of Simest, a joint-stock company controlled by the Italian Foreign Trade Ministry established to promote Italian business abroad, which is ready to invest $2.7 million. The WBJ's Anna Kocinska talked to Fincast's general manager, Dariusz Przychoda, about the concept for Tele 5 and its chances for survival on the cutthroat TV market. The following is a translated and edited version of their conversation. Q: Are there any links between Fincast and (Italian Prime Minister) Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest? A: It's no secret. Our president (Vittorio Hemsi) used to work with Berlusconi. He was involved in mergers and acquisitions abroad. He'd done it for many years. While there are currently no legal connections whatsoever with Fininvest, in the future we might be able to establish some kind of legal and financial connection with Berlusconi. Q: So you're in talks? A: Neither can I deny nor confirm. Q: Gazeta Wyborcza described Tele 5 as "canned" television. Your comments? A: That's a funny expression but we don't want to be like a music box. We won't simply run one taped program after another. Tele 5 will have its own hosts who will inspire feedback from viewers. Q: Will you try to create your own celebrities? A: Well, we'll obviously have a few already known personalities who will come to us from other stations. You can't really avoid such a situation because in Poland you have a group of very well known brilliant journalists and hosts. But there are practically no younger people who already have TV experience but are less famous and ready to be employed. So, we've already signed three contracts with well-known hosts. But generally, our policy will be to promote our own people because there is no point in starting a new channel based on people and faces known from other stations. Q: Media stalwarts RMF FM and ITI are also planning to launch new TV channels this year, so you will really need to come up with unusual programs to distinguish yourself. A: I hope we will. There is a program on politics and current affairs that we will produce, which is based on the concept of an open studio, which in itself is not new but will be different on Tele 5. Such programs on public television (TVP) for instance lack one thing: They are too short and the TV audience never has an opportunity to really become familiar with the opinions and views presented by politicians or the other side in a conflict. Our program will last as long as it's necessary and as long as the temperature of discussion is high. Q: Are you planning to introduce any really new program formats that will put you ahead of the competition? A: We're going to have a new game show that is based on an Italian format. It will consist of nine different games played in a single episode, though I think we'll cut that number down to five. Unlike other Polish game shows, this one will offer not only games, but also a spectacle. I think it will be an interesting experiment. Q: Is there anything else in your lineup that will make you stand out from your competitors? A: We'll run the best film series produced in Europe. Among the top films that we bought are "Metropolis," "Attachments," "Navarro" and "St. Tropez." It's funny because despite the fact that we're really only starting this television station we were able to establish very friendly cooperation with European stations. While so far they've barely sold anything to Poland, we managed to buy, in my opinion, the best new productions but also a lot of classics such as comedies "Yes minister" and "Fawlty Towers." We also bought "Doctor Who," the most popular series on the British market. Q: What will be the ratio between your own productions and imported programs? A: We are starting this channel with no more than several homemade productions such as an open studio, a talk show, "Kontener," a three-hour program for a younger audience, and an automobile program. We couldn't produce more than that because we would risk getting into all sorts of jams. We'll also run a press review but we won't have typical news programs on Tele 5. TVP and TVN have great news programs so I think that instead of competing with them while trying to launch our own news program, we should rather focus on surpassing them. Q: Are you planning a promotional campaign? What will it be based on? A: The campaign is founded on our main slogan, "a better picture of the world," which can also be understood as a picture of a better world. Tele 5 is going to be a look at the bright side kind of TV channel, and devoid of violence. We need to emphasize our distinctiveness because a small venture like ours will only succeed if we encourage viewers to tune in to us because of the individual character of our format. Q: Why are you starting now when so many new cable and satellite TV channels are scheduled to be launched? Is it a result of a carefully planned strategy or coincidence? A: It's pure coincidence. When looking for financial backing we were negotiating with so many different companies that it took us two years to finally find one. And it's not easy these days to find a partner for such a venture. Q: Were you surprised when RMF FM announced it would start a TV channel and ITI also said it would launch at least two new channels this year? The TV market is getting really tight ... A: And it will become even tighter. We are not surprised at all. Q: You said your goal is to achieve 5% audience share. That's not a very ambitious goal, is it? A: It's absolutely the most we can achieve. If you want to have a 5% share of the so-called total universe - the entire TV audience - you have to reach 12% of the satellite and cable market. And a 12% share of the cable TV audience where there are at least 30 different channels available is more of a challenge than generating such a share on the terrestrial TV market. Terrestrial TV stations generate impressive audience shares so easily because, paradoxically, they provide poorer programming when compared to cable and satellite television. They provide three or four channels to the 60% of society that has no cable or satellite access. We want to compete for audience share with the big ones, such as Polsat or TVP, not with stations like TV Puls or TVN. By the end of the first year of broadcasting we'd like to achieve 2% audience share. Q: What kind of advertisers will Tele 5 attract? A: By definition, the audience for satellite and cable television in Poland is more interesting to advertisers. Subscribers of cable and satellite TV are people who live in larger rather than smaller cities and they usually have at least a college education and their income is often higher than the national average. So their purchasing power is better than in the rest of the country. That's what we're hoping anyway. Additionally, I think that the days of thoughtless, imprecise ad planning are slowly coming to an end. This process isn't as fast as we would like but it's happening. Placing ads for so many goods on terrestrial television without careful identification of target groups makes no sense at all. Take credit cards, mobile phones or life insurance, they are all available to a smaller percentage of viewers of terrestrial television compared to satellite and cable audiences. Q: Are you planning to broadcast from abroad the way RTL 7 (acquired by ITI Group in December 2001) did? A: It's a serious venture for us so we want to apply to the National Television and Radio Council (KRRiTV) for a broadcasting license. We would like to have an uplink here in Warsaw, where our studios are located. It's not that costly ($250,000) and it can be installed within six weeks after we receive the license. Until we install the uplink we will broadcast Tele 5 from Italy. Q: Have you considered producing a reality show to make a big splash initially? Some analysts say that RTL 7 should have produced one to save itself. A: I don't share the opinions about RTL 7, some of which maintain that the station was a complete failure. Yes, if you look at it from its owner's perspective its market position was disappointing, but from the perspective of the satellite and cable market, the 4% audience share RTL 7 achieved was a success. If the station's audience share dropped from 4% to 2% it was only because its owners stopped investing and developing it. As for reality shows, they are only a temporary way of raising a station's audience share. In addition, we simply didn't want a ‘Big Brother'0 format on our channel because it's already getting boring. Of course, we could behave like a small, aggressive TV station and by going beyond a number of limits we could be successful. It should be easy to produce such a low-level station and the press would write about us everyday but we can't go this route. I'm not interested in this kind of television and Mr. Hemsi is not, either. There is yet another reason why we don't want to become such a television station. We plan to apply for a digital terrestrial TV (DGT) license to broadcast digitally in four years. The KRRiTV wouldn't grant us such a license if we transgressed cultural and moral laws. The DGT license would make Tele 5 available in the entire country but first we have to survive those initial four or five years on the market.