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Viewers know how to change channels. Unfortunately
August 30, 2010, Tyden
PETR DVOOÁK was the general manager of Nova for seven years. Now he has been moved upward in the parent company CME and we are still awaiting his successor in the chair of the most watched television. “We were a little arrogant, but that has changed,” claims the man who now manages six general managers.
How many television stations in Central and Eastern Europe do you now actually have under you?
My direct subordinates are general managers of televisions in six countries who manage twenty one channels altogether.
That change is a bit mysterious. Officially you were promoted, but to some it can appear as being put out of the way.
You know what… I would definitely not want a position that is just for show and that doesn’t decide anything or moves anything forward.
Is it another effort to cut costs at Nova, for example by merging the positions of the general manager and chief executive, that’s behind this change?
It’s one of the alternatives.
Do you already have a short-list of candidates?
Our preference is to find somebody from internal sources; we have several candidates, but I won’t reveal any more about it. If there was a forgotten pearl elsewhere on the market, we would probably know about it by now. We would like to make the decision within one or two months.
Only two years were left for you to overcome Vladimír Železný, who managed Nova for nine years.
Really? But this is not a criterion that would be decisive for me.
In your opinion, what did Železný do well and where did he make mistakes?
His era was unrepeatable. The hunger for commercial broadcasting was big back then, he hit the nail right on the head as far as the viewers‘ taste was concerned. He understood that commercial television is mainly about entertainment. But at one point he started to focus too much on his own things that then lead to economic and legal disputes. After that the television ran more or less on inertia.
You are occasionally described as the general manager that will always be connected with the era of the decline of Nova’s viewership.
That’s drivel. Everyone is constantly talking about the decline of viewership in the general group of viewers older than fifteen, which is the target group for which Nova used to sell advertising for until 2006. We are focused on the target group that is between fifteen and fifty four and the overall viewership is growing here year-on-year. Perhaps not on the main channel, but it is growing as we add other channels (Nova Cinema, Nova Sport, the Czech version of MTV, editor’s note). We started a trend that is common everywhere else in the world, i.e., make it possible for the viewer that does not find his program on the main channel to change channels and not switch to the competition.
This past weekend a battle with Prima began, as it put the show Eesko Slovensko má talent[Czecho-Slovakia has talent] against your Talentmania. Are you worried that the competition will once win out as it did a while ago with Vyvolení [The Chosen Ones]?
Our approach is different this time. When in the fall of 2005 we broadcast Big Brother in the same time slot as Vyvolení, we had a somewhat arrogant feeling that even if Nova broadcast stripes or pixels people would still stay and watch. We paid for that back then.
You yourself back then declared that Nova is a BMW and Prima is a Trabant.
That fall was not positive at all, I will remember it for a long time. So when we were preparing the joint project of Nova and Markíza against the competing Prima and Joj, we were very vigilant. But if it doesn’t work out, it’s only one evening of the week…
How do you make the decision which serials to broadcast? The broadcasting of the popular Comeback, the continuation of which is already finished, is still being delayed?
We are giving Comeback a bit of a rest, so that the third series arouses interest once again. We want to introduce some new shows, via which we would like to show that we are not sleeping.
Is it true that “everything is managed by Romanians” at Nova, i.e., by Adrian Sarbu and his countrymen, as some voices from the television are saying?
This is stated by people that do not want to accept the new rules that Nova must follow in order to always stay ahead.
How did you get along with your Romanian superior Adrian Sarbu, who at first glance is a significantly different type of person than you?
He is very inspiring and opposites complement each other. Even though as a former director he came from the artistic trade, he has great feeling for economic thinking. When he joined us four years ago, he spoke a language that we understood, i.e., English, but he was saying things that we were not completely sure what they meant.
Such as?
He came here with a number of brand new concepts and at the start we were not completely convinced about the need for them. But then his experience from the Romanian market, which is the most competitive market on which CME operates, came through. For example, he showed us the way to creating new channels.
But his Pro TV television, which he built in Romania, was not nearly so successful. Last year it made five times less money there than Nova.
That’s not true. That television is able to generate an almost sixty percent market share. And that’s the maximum possible performance on the Romanian market, where there are five times as many channels seeking advertising money as in the Czech Republic. The ratio of the share of advertising money and the share of viewership is even higher than Nova’s.
Was one of the reasons why the American owners entrusted the key position to Sarbu their experience with Železný, who actually cheated them? Were they simply afraid to give the position to a local person?
That’s not how it is. My powers did not change significantly after Nova was overtaken by CME again. Adrian simply came here and showed us a new way of seeing the world and it has worked out well, especially now during the crisis.
In the only interview that he gave in the Czech Republic, he said that businessmen are “ugly, sad and boring”. You are a businessman. Were you offended?
I am a businessman who, for example, plays electric guitar in the Brumloboys band. When it is necessary, I am sad and boring, and where it is necessary, I can let my hair down.
How is the Czech viewer different from viewers in Romania or Croatia, where CME has its television stations?
The southern nations work more with emotions, such as sadness or joy. The Czech viewer is more reserved and displays emotions less. We have detailed measurements of the behavior of specific viewer groups; the quantity of numbers is extreme. We know how viewers behave by seconds. When we are broadcasting an entertainment show, we know whether viewers are enjoying the song of a particular artist, whether they are switching to different channels at that moment and when they are switching back.
Nova’s programming director is an American who is also the chief executive. Certainly he and other foreign colleagues have asked you about the subtleties of the Czech viewer. What did you reveal?
That he tries to put on a different appearance than he behaves in reality. This is demonstrated by viewership of the small channels. If you’re talking with somebody, everyone claims they are watching CT2, the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. But then you look at the numbers and discover that most of those who are telling you this are watching Ordinace v ružové zahradi [Rose Garden Medical] and our news.
In your opinion, how has the Czech viewer changed in the past ten, fifteen years?
He is more selective. He has learned how to use the remote control. Unfortunately. He recognizes quality and is not fooled by a marketing campaign. If the product is not good, he has no mercy and switches elsewhere.
There are plenty of critics who claim that thanks to Nova the viewer became dumber and lazier.
Commercial television is not here to raise somebody and to create a nation’s cultural wealth. It is supposed to entertain the viewer and to bring him rest.
Entertain and make money.
Yes, commercial television works on the principle of the standard making of money. That’s the assignment.
If your research shows that viewers want to see something extreme, more violence, a show where people humiliate one another, etc., will you have scruples about broadcasting it?
We try to only go to such extremes that the viewer can handle and that are in line with the law. We do not want to strictly shock, our viewer does not really want shock therapy.
So it is not just up to the viewer and legal regulations, there is also an internal regulation at Nova?
Of course internal discussion also plays a role in the decision-making. If we say “that’s too much”, then we won’t do it.
For example?
We had documentary shows on our table where people are able to go beyond the limit of self-destruction using drugs, for example. There we said it’s too much.
Why did you cancel Na vlastní oei [With your own eyes]? For many people that otherwise do not watch Nova it was the only show they watched.
Eyes gradually lost its life and the team behind it was also exhausted. From research we discovered that the format was no longer attractive for the viewers. The investigative journalism format can return at some point in a different version. We used to be able to have some shows to make us money and some to create our brand, but now is not the time for this yet.
Was the fact that clients did not want to have their commercials around Eyes one of the main reasons for their cancellation?
That’s one of the pieces of the mosaic. Take Kotel [The Boiler] for example. It worked, it had viewership, but the problem was that advertising clients were saying: we’ll order everywhere else, just not there.
Why?
It was a controversial show, both from the format as well as from the content point of view, and advertising clients did not want to be connected with the show at all. Commercial television exists to fill in the space between commercial segments with some programs. There was nothing left to do but to cancel that show.
So public service, investigative journalism, is nothing for commercial televisions?
Public service via commercial stations is an oxymoron.
What will television look like in another ten years?
If we are talking about television as a distribution channel, then there will be more of them than today. It will no longer be a classic screen. You will be able to access television via the Internet, via various devices that you will be able to carry with you, mobile phones or smart PDA’s. But content, which you will be able to get to users via various distribution channels, will remain the key. If the viewer is interested in the content, he will find it.
What is the limit of where advertising can go? Catastrophical visions say that the television show of the future will be one big product placement.
We cannot afford to overload the viewer with so much advertising that he will leave. After the law changes, we will try to have shorter and shorter commercial breaks and to work with their quantity and staggering during the broadcasting, but at the same time we will offer clients the chance to get into various shows via product placement. In contrast to James Bond, who telephones with a Nokia and wears Omegas, we were not able to show in Ordinace [Rose Garden Medical] which medication the doctor is using to treat the patient. And now we will be able to do that.
Isn’t this hidden advertising unfair? With medicine, where health is concerned, it can even be dangerous if the viewer then asks the doctor to prescribe medication that he saw in Ordinace, even if different medicine would be more helpful for him.
This would not concern hidden advertising, but rather a legislatively regulated format of commercial presentation, which is called product placement. We would internally assess the placement of medicine from many different perspectives.
Nova’s profits are declining, but your pay (now fifteen million Czech crowns per year, excluding bonuses, editor’s note) is growing. Is this logical?
It is a business where both parties should be satisfied. If I had the feeling that I am not getting enough money, I could go somewhere where I would perhaps get more. If the employer has the feeling that I am not delivering what he is expecting for his money, then he will fire me. That’s an equation that applies from the general manager to the lighting technician.
When Barack Obama stated that one of the causes of the crisis is the insatiability of top managers, was that pure populism?
In a private company it is always the decision of the persons that own the company and those who work in it. It’s nobody else’s business. It was unfortunate to comment on it in this way. On the other hand, during the crisis we made across-the-board cuts to the pay of the entire top management at Nova and Markíza by fifteen percent for one year. People understood. Now the market is coming to life again and we have returned to the level where we were before.
Petr Dvooák
Since last December he is the Senior Vice-President of CME responsible for television broadcasting. This past summer he left the General Manager position of TV Nova, where he remains an executive. He was born in Kaplice, Southern Bohemia. He studied technical cybernetics at EVUT and he received an MBA from the University of Chicago. He founded the B.I.G. PR Agency. In 1999 he joined PPF where he managed the development of Expandia Bank. Three year‘s later Petr Kellner’s company bought Nova and in 2003 Petr Dvooák became its General Manager. He remained in the position even after the television was overtaken by the American company CME, which had lost it earlier after disputes with Nova’s General Manager at the time, Vladimír Železný. Dvooák is divorced and has two daughters from his first marriage. He is also raising two daughters with his second partner.
For additional information, please contact:
Romana Wyllie
Vice President of Corporate Communications
Central European Media Enterprises
Krizeneckeho nam. 1078/5
152 00 Praha 5
Czech Republic
+420 242 465 525
romana.wyllie@cme.net
