UPC tags $100 million for revolutionizing media services
Amsterdam-based United Pan-Europe Communications (UPC) plans to spend more than $100 million on improving services offered in Poland as well as expanding programming, the company said.
UPC entered the Polish market last year in August with its purchase of 100% of media company @Entertainment. That acquisition gave UPC control of digital TV operators WizjaTV as well as cable outfit PTK.
"Poland is the fourth largest TV market in Europe and the most special one for UPC with 12.5 million households as potential customers," said Bruce Massey, UPC's managing director for Poland.
"We are ready to revolutionize services offered to Polish customers," added Henrietta Hirst, the company's director of group corporate communications.
In addition to its TV operations, UPC also has plans to offer high-speed data transmission services through PTK's cable network. This year alone, UPC will invest $8 million-$10 million to upgrade PTK's cable network in the Krakow and Warsaw areas, switching the lines to handle two-way traffic. That modernization is expected to make PTK's lines eight to 10 times faster than existing phone lines, reaching up to 400 kilobytes per second.
"As a result of tests that we are doing in Poland we can already get speeds of 200 kilobytes per second," Massey said. He estimated the total cost of such modernization work to be $75 million-$100 million. UPC will rely on its own Cello company for internet services, but will also work with local internet providers, Massey said.
UPC also has its eye on the telephone market, he said. "The market today is not totally liberalized," he said. "We believe it will happen in 2002-2003 at which time we will be able to offer residential and business telephone services through our broadband system."
On the TV front, he said the group intends to submit an application for a Polish broadcast license within the next few weeks. If granted, the license may close the case for UPC as to whether dislocated broadcasting beaming a signal in from outside Poland to avoid license requirements is really legal.
To date, Wizja has broadcast from the U.K. on the basis of the Poland-ratified European Convention on Transfrontier Television, which allows for dislocated broadcasting.
WizjaTV claims to have roughly 1 million subscribers, of which 300,000 receive the service via cable while 700,000 are beamed a signal via satellite. The competing Cyfra+ digital platform, backed by Canal+, has 320,000 subscribers, said Paulina Krasinska, a PR specialist with the company.
Public confession
Father and son documentary directors Marcel and Pawel Lozinski plan to set up 25 booths around the country where Poles can go to make contemporary "confessions" that will be recorded by a digital camera.
The project, called Kinematograf, will involve displaying static images of individuals and their confessions as part of a documentary series. Both directors stressed that individuals will be taped voluntarily and can switch the camera off whenever they wish.
"It's an individual who will decide whether he wants to be seen and what part of his life story he wants to reveal," Marcel Lozinski said. "It's he who presses the button to turn on the camera."
Cameras will start shooting on Sept. 1. All the cabins will be open 24 hours a day. Lozinski said that all recordings will also be available via the internet, and the most interesting clips will be published in daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and broadcast on public television Telewizja Polska (TVP). The directors expect to receive as many as 30,000 recordings.
"I am not afraid of talking heads because if someone has something really interesting to say, you keep listening," Lozinski said.
The most compelling vignettes will be used in a documentary that is to be completed by the end of this year, the Lozinskis said. "I hope they (confessions) will reflect the country's atmosphere and the inner life of Poles," Marcel Lozinski said.
The two directors are still looking for project sponsors, though. "It's too early to evaluate the total costs of the project, but we are looking for powerful companies to help us," he said.
Andrzej Wajda, the legendary movie director who received an honorary Oscar last week in Los Angeles, is already assisting in promoting the project, Lozinski said. "And it's already a great help to us," he said.
Mixed report
Media watchdog National Television and Radio Council (KRRiTV) last week released its yearly report summing up the happenings in the radio and TV world.
By law, the council has to issue a report every year before the end of March. Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, President Aleksander Kwasniewski and both chambers of Parliament will now either accept or reject the council's findings. A rejection is taken to mean overall disapproval of the council itself, and the body can then be dissolved within 14 days, although that has never happened.
While many public opinion surveys indicate that public television and radio remain two of the most trusted institutions in Poland, KRRiTV's report found just the opposite. The report cited numerous complaints in 1999 of the media's abuse of power and manipulation of information.
"The most serious complaints are discussed at the council's meetings," said Joanna Stepien, spokesman for Juliusz Braun, chairman of the council. "But all the council can do is to release statements, meet broadcasters or call them to renounce bad practices."
The council, which is split into political factions representing both Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), recently unanimously voted to condemn TVP management for broadcasting an interview with Grzegorz Piotrowski, a former officer with the communist secret service serving a sentence for the murder of father Jerzy Popieluszko, the famous priest and Solidarity leader. In the interview, which aired two weeks ago, Piotrowski said he was falsely accused of killing Popieluszko. The KRRiTV called on TVP president Robert Kwiatkowski to reprimand those who were responsible for the broadcast airing.
