A+E Networks EMEA’s Izabella Wiley is eager to see greater collaboration across CEE as the company maintains a steady line-up of homegrown and acquired shows in challenging times.

Izabella Wiley is senior VP and general manager for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) at the EMEA arm of Hearst- and Disney-owned US cable channels business A+E Networks. As such, she is responsible for the programming, scheduling and P&L of three brands across the region, namely History Channel, History2 and Crime+Investigation.

Izabella Wiley

While her remit was expanded earlier this year to include Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Wiley’s CEE focus spans 17 other countries: Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Estonia, Albania, Montenegro, Lithuania and Latvia.

“Poland is the biggest market for us, where we have our office in Warsaw and operate three channels, but we also have businesses in Romania and Hungary,” says Wiley. “History is our key brand. We commission local shows for History and for Crime+Investigation, whereas History2 is mostly filled with international content from the US and UK.”

A+E Networks is run in the latter country as a joint venture between Hearst and Comcast’s Sky. Acquisitions from territories including Germany and Scandinavia also form part of the line-up, she adds.

Programming spans single documentaries and series about topics ranging from the ancient world to modern warfare, with current titles including US fare such as The Curse of Oak Island, History’s Greatest Mysteries, Pawn Stars and immersive history series I Was There.

“We are lucky to have quite a lot of great content from the US, but we are actually headquartered in London in terms of the EMEA operations and commission a lot in all our offices across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the UK being the biggest and most active,” says Wiley.

While the majority of A+E’s CEE output is sourced from the US and UK operations, the exec and her team order homegrown shows in their biggest markets. “In Poland, we commission History content and true crime for Crime+Investigation; in Romania, it’s History; and in Hungary, we’re just looking for partners to do some History productions.”

Although History is the flagship channel, Crime+Investigation has the greatest number of local shows. While it’s still a small proportion of the overall line-up, Wiley says the latter network orders four series per year of between five and eight episodes in Poland, whereas History will greenlight two series of six to 10 episodes and Romania will have one of three to five episodes. Hungary gets some original shortform but in all three countries the schedules are bespoke, with a mix of tailored acquisitions and commissions.

Smithsonian acquisition WWII Battles in Color was a success for A+E

“Usually, producers pitch to us shows about Hitler or some uprising back in the 18th Century, but this is not the history that delivers ratings,” says Wiley. “We believe history is made every day, and we need to talk about history in a way that is interesting to viewers today who can watch something like Stranger Things. Old-style black-and-white documentary is not the right thing to use.”

She points to WWII Battles in Color from Smithsonian as among A+E’s most successful recent acquisitions. “It’s actually like watching a scripted series, but you’re looking at documentary footage that is brought back to life again and it resonates really well with our audiences. That innovation is how you can tell stories that make current viewers care about what happened in the past and how it is relevant for them today,” says Wiley.

“We have great results with the documentaries or any type of history-related factual content that was produced for national broadcasters or terrestrial channels. Usually, the philosophy of these free-to-air channels is to broadcast something once, maybe with one repeat. If we can acquire this content and schedule it on our channels, that is very valuable to us.”

In terms of locally commissioned shows, she highlights The Hunt for Baltic Gold, a series about the search for amber across the region, the secrets it reveals and treasures that can be fashioned from the fossilised resin. “It’s about doing things now that tell stories from history,” says Wiley of the show, which comes from Polish independent ATM Grupa and has so far run to five seasons.

“We are an entertainment channel, so it’s about delivering some knowledge to people, but making it entertaining or, as one US producer put it, ‘hiding the broccoli.’ You want to deliver nutritious content, but you don’t want people to feel like they’re consuming a professor’s lecture.”

The latest A+E EMEA order to involve its CEE channels is Dictators’ Hideouts, a six-part series produced by Warsaw-based prodco Inbornmedia. Launching in 2024, each episode will reveal the private sanctuary of a European autocrat, such as Albania’s Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, as well as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.

The series will launch on Sky History in the UK and History Channel in Poland, Romania and other CEE countries, as well as on RTL’s news and documentary channel NTV in Germany, which is attached as a pre-buyer.

ATM’s The Hunt for Baltic Gold has run up five seasons

Many local players in CEE are still reluctant to coproduce, says Wiley, and her experience of having spent a few years working at large US companies, including Paramount Global, reflected this. “We have tried to work with various terrestrial broadcasters in various countries, and usually people in local companies ask what an American or a British company would know about their local market. They think we have nothing to offer, we don’t know their audience, we don’t know the way they tell stories.’

“While I have massive respect for the local broadcasters who’ve built huge market share and resonance with their audience, I believe there are certain ways of telling stories that international companies can bring to local players, and this partnership can create a really nice outcome. But it’s not always that open and collaborative.”

With all that is going on in the world, however – particularly across the Polish border in Ukraine – Wiley believes there is greater need than ever for partners to come together. Russia’s war on the country had an immediate impact in terms of the TV industry, she says.

“As a TV channel, you make money from advertising – it is a massive chunk of revenue – and when the war began, with the uncertainty about what’s going to happen, advertising campaigns were put on hold and there was the supply chain disruption that destabilised our business model. But luckily it was only temporarily,” says Wiley.

“The resistance of the world and the need to go on, adjust, correct course and keep going is absolutely fascinating, and that’s what happened. The advertisers came back. Some sectors of the economy actually saw a bump in revenue because of increased acquisitions to support the war effort and to take things back to Ukraine. So last year was good but then high inflation started to be a problem and it just kept growing and growing.”

The exec references Hungary, where the inflation rate topped 20%, Poland and Bulgaria too, both of which at one point were headed in the same direction. “That became a massive challenge,” Wiley continues. “When it comes to our business, the softening of advertising market is immediately felt because we have to cut costs to be able to deliver expected financial results. That is felt both in investment in local commissions and acquisitions, and in all kinds of spend that is not fixed.”

The cost-of-living crisis and challenging economic climate have led to commissioners at streamers and broadcasters everywhere reducing their budgets and pausing or pulling productions, as well as warming to more coproduction opportunities.

Dictators’ Hideouts from Polish prodco Inbornmedia

“For many companies that threw everything, including their kitchen sink, at streaming, it was quite a rude awakening this year when the cost of loans to finance all of that expansion became prohibitive,” says Wiley.

“The cost of accessing capital became so high that they were cut off from financing. They put so much money into streaming, which is not yet delivering profits. Having the healthy, well-balanced costs versus revenue of a traditional TV operation, I refuse to give in to the sense of panic that streamers will eat the industry. We need to make sure our business models are in sync with reality. That we will replace revenue from the traditional model with a streaming revenue one year to another is just wishful thinking.”

Wiley says A+E’s “conservative” approach to content investment means it hasn’t had to cut back on any planned local content so far. “We’re not detached from the overall economy. When there is less money in people’s purses, that obviously affects everyone because people drop subscriptions and advertisers invest less in commercial breaks, and that filters down to all the budgets,” she says.

“When you don’t have revenue as planned in the budgets, costs need to come down as well, and that also applies to programming investments. At A+E, we’ve been quite conservative in planning our commissions, so luckily we didn’t have to cut any planned investments.

“At the same time, I believe that by partnering with other companies, we can do more because we can pair budgets, we can do much bigger shows and bigger-scale productions. We can contribute, let’s say, archive materials, so that we can add some fresh additions and create something interesting. With the economy being in the hard place it is right now, this is the time for being creative and working together, and sharing broadcast windows is definitely the way to go.”