Broadcasters in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are facing difficulties securing new co-production partners. This is largely attributed to dwindling interest from larger nations and the continued expansion of streaming services. At NEM Zagreb, Natalija Gorscak, President of the Management Board at RTV Slovenia, highlighted the lack of investment from major players like Netflix in smaller markets. “Do you think that Netflix would be interested in investing in Slovenia with a potential audience of 800,000? They just care about Poland and the other big countries,” she stated, pointing out the irony of consumers readily paying for international streaming services while resisting local licensing fees. “We are not taking care of our local media landscape,” Gorscak emphasized. “We need to work better with the local producers, we need to think about how we can produce things in our own languages. We need help in protecting our culture and our language.”
Bartosz Witak, General Manager, SVP of CEE, MENA and Turkey at BBC Studios, corroborated these challenges. While acknowledging Netflix's job creation in Poland's production sector, he noted its absence in Slovenia. He also preferred collaborations with smaller, local streamers over Netflix, despite occasional partnerships with the platform. Lenka Szántó, Creative Producer at TV Nova/Voyo, described streamers as direct competitors aiming for market dominance. “We have one million subs [In the Czech and Slovak Republics] meaning there’s Netflix, there’s Voyo, and then there’s all the others,” she explained.
Rahela Štefanovi?, Editor in Chief at HTV, Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT), discussed the hurdles of co-productions, focusing on the need to improve their legal framework to better support local producers. “Inside the EBU the experts are trying to make as many co productions as they can. In drama it is very difficult. In documentary it is much more simple,” she observed. She cited financing difficulties and political polarization as additional obstacles. The previously reliable source of children’s co-productions has also dwindled, with reduced interest from the UK, France, and Nordic countries in collaborating with smaller nations.
Witak expressed pessimism about content's international appeal. “It’s much easier to think about non-scripted documentaries, documenting a situation or an event. It’s difficult for drama to travel as there are so many differences in terms of perceptions and details. It is much better to sell a format that is created to local requirements than to create something from scratch,” he concluded.