Too Hot? / Poland

Michael Hedges November 10, 2005

There is an old music industry expression - Too Hot Not to Cool Down. It’s meant as a warning to those hotter than hot new stars. It’s a concept not lost on media people in Poland. And the effect is being felt throughout the sector.

The business of media is good in Poland, very good. There’s double digit ad growth. Consumers are buying, even if they are going into debit to do it. Sit by anybody listening to the radio and you watch them punch among seven or eight stations, constantly, listening, sampling, But, warn broadcasters and research people, there are no strong brands. No media outlets, save perhaps the newspapers, have time for branding those products. That’s far too strategic, meaning “long term.” And confidence in the “long term” is noticeably absent.

So, all attention is on revenue, today’s revenue, the moment’s finite program element

Competition is so fierce broadcasters cannot sit down among themselves. There is no broadcasters association. The only common point is a joint industry committee, the KBR, for organizing audience measurement. The competition, they say, isn’t just professional; it’s personal.

“Television is just crazy,” said one television broadcaster. The public broadcaster – TV Polonia (TVP) – has two channels and fights for ratings – in search of ad revenue – with PolSat and ITN, both expanding with more cable channels. The mixed licensee fee – advertising model finances TVP. But with only about one-third of Polish households paying the license fee, money from advertising is necessary. Cultural programming suffers as TVP produces and broadcasts guaranteed ratings winners. TVP has more than 50% of the television audience.

The recent Polish elections did little for building confidence among the media sector. Said one radio operator, “We hope they do only half what they say they’ll do and we don’t care which half.” A proposal to merge the National Broadcast Council with the telecom regulator, as a “super-regulator" in the UK OFCOM model, remains pending. If passed, media regulation will change, again.

But again and again, the rumbling throughout the Polish media sector is “It can be better than it is.” And they’re not just talking about the money.

Editors note: Michael Hedges traveled through the new EU Member States, September 2005 through February 2006, surveying the audiovisual sector for European Commission Social Dialogue committee. The reports for ftm are his own observations and do not reflect the positions of the European Commission or any of the members of the Social Dialogue committee.

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