Endemol Shine Poland on providing a CEE hub
Following her appointment as MD at Banijay’s Endemol Shine Poland last year, Małgorzata Perkowska-Czaja is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy involving pitching Banijay formats into the local market, providing a hub for other CEE regions and examining the potential in drama, all while dealing with CEE issues in general and the specific political situation in Poland.
Małgorzata Perkowska-Czaja
It was all change at the Polish arm of European production and distribution giant Banijay at the end of 2023 as Małgorzata Perkowska-Czaja stepped into the MD role at production company Endemol Shine Poland, while Ryszard Sibilski, who’d led the business for two decades, announced he was standing down.
The company said at the time Perkowska-Czaja had been tasked with evolving the business’s slate, identifying new revenue streams and strengthening its commercial strategy to futureproof and bolster growth. In line with the move, the label was shifted to sit under the Banijay Germany group umbrella, with the role reporting to Endemol Shine Germany’s MD Fabian Tobias.
Perkowska-Czaja joined from Rochstar, where she spent a year as MD, but the move represented something of a homecoming as she had previously spent seven years at Endemol Shine Poland, latterly as director of non-scripted sales, overseeing the company’s entertainment formats.
These include MasterChef and its spin-offs and Big Brother for TVN; All Together Now and Family Food Fight for Polsat; The Wall (and its international hub) and Don’t Forget the Lyrics! for pubcaster TVP; and Fort Boyard for Viaplay. “Although I’m in a new position, the company was familiar to me,” she tells C21 some six months later.
“Our position in the Polish market continues to be strong in the entertainment sector and I am keen to build on that and develop more titles and explore more partnerships with the streaming platforms here,” Perkowska-Czaja adds.
Current shows on air include season two of Second Chance Dresses for Polsat Café; season four of Don’t Forget The Lyrics for TVP2; and Drag Me Out! and MasterChef Young Talents, both in their first series for WBD-owned TVN. The prodco also recently wrapped production on the 28th season of The Money Drop for TVP2 and the 20th season of Your Face Sounds Familiar for Polsat.
Małgorzata Perkowska-Czaja company’s entertainment formats, including All Together Now
Perkowska-Czaja says scripted, meanwhile, is “booming” in Poland and she’s keen to do more in this genre. “With the entrance of the streamers into this country, I can see a lot of demand from both them and the linear broadcasters. I would therefore like to strengthen our scripted division to build our capabilities here to effectively capitalise on the opportunities in the market.”
Endemol Shine Poland can obviously draw on the vast library of formats available from Banijay Rights to pitch into the local market, but another part of its strategy is to serve as a cost-effective production hub to make Banijay shows for all sorts of other territories in Poland where the market is well-established and production quality relatively high. Endemol Shine Poland has, for example, put together production centres for The Wall, Lego Masters and All Together Now, producing for the UK, Australia, Germany and elsewhere.
In some ways the headwinds facing the Polish content business are familiar to anybody trying to get television series made in 2024. Perkowska-Czaja points to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, high inflation, the economic slowdown and the impact all this has taken on the advertising market and media landscape around the world. She says the “Polish market has adapted quite well, with the ad market now in relatively good shape and the outlook rather optimistic, as consumer confidence rises again.”
What is unique to the Polish market is the political situation. In 2023, representing something of an upset, the right-wing ruling Law & Justice Party was toppled by the Civic Coalition alliance, led by former prime minister Donald Tusk. The result was particularly good news for the country’s public broadcaster TVP, which had been hobbled and hollowed out under the two terms of the previous government but is now rapidly rescaling.
Second Chance Dresses currently airs on Polsat Café
“Of course, the political shift following the election last October will create a new situation in public media,” Perkowska-Czaja says. “The new government quickly introduced new management in TVP and declared it would adopt new regulations aimed at securing more financial stability for the public media sector, to ensure its independence from political and commercial pressure. However, the years ahead may be challenging for TVP as it begins to receive less financing than before.
“When it comes to commercial broadcasters, the Polish market is dominated by two strong players: WBD-owned TVN and Polsat. Both have strong portfolios of channels that deliver content not offered by streamers – whether it’s live entertainment or news. With political friction in Poland in recent months, news channels have grown extremely popular, on some occasions beating main players in ratings – TVN24 for instance has been enormously successful. Understandably, linear broadcasters try to adapt to changing viewer habits, growing their own VoD platforms or FAST channels, helping them maintain a stronger foothold in the market.
“Streaming platforms are becoming increasingly popular like everywhere else; not only the international services like Netflix and Disney+, but also local platforms like Player.pl. Investing in local talent, they open new possibilities for Polish producers,” she says.
“Last year may have seen some slowdown in scripted commissions, but it’s still way above the level we saw several years ago. New players are entering the Polish market and commissioning local shows, so even if the likes of Netflix do not take as much as they did a few years ago, the market is quite healthy overall. In fact, last year we had more premieres of local scripted series than in previous years.
“The streamers absolutely tend to commission more scripted shows, but lately there’s also more interest from them in non-scripted. At Endemol Shine Poland, we are strong in both, though I have a feeling we have room to grow in scripted.”
The audience, like elsewhere, tends to skew older and more conservative for the linear broadcasters, with younger audience looking to streamers. “We have to respond to that – there are some shows I wouldn’t offer to TVP, but they will land well on Prime Video, and vice versa. The most important thing is that we respect the viewers we already have so they can find content for themselves,” says Perkowska-Czaja.
“Ultimately, the one thing viewers all have in common is their desire for truth and true emotions. If you serve them inauthentic shows, the audience will sense it and the show will likely fail.”
Shows like Drag Me Out are skewed to younger audiences
So what does Perkowska-Czaja see as the future trends to take advantage, or be wary, of in the CEE region moving forwards?
“I can only talk about Poland, though I suspect the trends are pretty similar everywhere,” she says. “I am generally optimistic about the state of the production sector – even if linear budgets do not grow, they are not declining at a fast rate and as a platform-agnostic player, we can work with both linear and streaming clients all at once.
“Poles are generally a rather conservative society, but I think we will be more open to some new genres or topics – a show like Drag Me Out would be hard to imagine in Poland several years ago, but here we are, and we just produced it for TVN.
“It’s likely there will be fewer shiny-floor, studio-based entertainment shows in primetime on major networks, as broadcasters may more boldly have to replace them with reality shows that deliver similar ratings. However, I imagine there will still be a hugely diverse offering of content across the board, which we will continue to deliver.
“Scripted series will no doubt continue to dominate commissioning from streamers, but I do hope demand for non-scripted will grow there too – we’re already seeing grass roots here. The good thing is Poland is an important market for the international players – Netflix, Max or Prime Video etc, so I hope the production business here will keep thriving.”
