RTL Croatia, which marks its 20th anniversarsy this year, has strengthened its position in the market with the arrival of streaming service Voyo, says CME Adria’s Stella Litou.

Central European Media Enterprises (CME)’s business in Croatia has been transformed over the course of the past year, in no small part thanks to streaming service Voyo. It made its debut in August 2023 and within six months, according to Stella Litou, CEO of CME Adria, had become a significant player in the market.

Stella Litou

In launching Voyo, CME brought RTL Croatia, which it acquired in 2022, into line with the other broadcasters it owns across Central and Eastern Europe. Up until that point, RTL Croatia had operated separate SVoD and AVoD services, named Play Premium and Play respectively.

RTL, says Litou, is “one of the strongest brands in Croatia and associated with entertainment, engagement and information.” The broadcaster is also celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024 in what she describes is a “pivotal year.”

Voyo, comments Litou, has already “reshaped the way Croatian viewers consume entertainment content – specifically, because it offers previews of all the local content on our linear channels. Also, it has more than 10,000 hours of local, original and foreign content.”

The preview feature, adds Litou, is something that is unique on the Croatian market. Moreover, Voyo also shows a significant amount of kids’ content that is “quite successful” and at the same time enables downloads. Indeed, it has “all the features you’d expect from a high-profile streaming platform, across all devices and smart TVs,” explains the CEO.

However, she continues, this is just “phase one,” with the second phase being the introduction of original Voyo content in the second half of this year. “There are two elements that will drive the popularity of the service. One is previews and the second content, especially sports content,” notes Litou.

Crime documentary series Dosje Jarak launched last year

Aside from Voyo, RTL Croatia operates three free-to-air channels: flagship RTL; RTL2, which shows mostly acquired US content such as The Big Bang Theory and Friends; and kids’ net RTL Kockica. In addition, it also offers viewers the thematic channels RTL Crime, RTL Passion, RTL Living, RTL Adria and RTL Croatia World.

Discussing successful programming on RTL, Litou separates its grid into information and entertainment. The former includes Dosje Jarak, a true crime documentary series launched last year that works equally well on Voyo and linear.

News also continues to perform well, specifically the 19.00 evening bulletin, RTL Danas, as do the informative RTL Direkt and satirical Friday night show Stanje Nacije. Meanwhile, on the entertainment front, “we have something that for many years we didn’t have in our grid, which is fiction,” says Litou.

RTL has introduced a daily fiction series called San Snova (Dream of Dreams), shown at 20.00, and will extend the slot for the upcoming year. Indeed, it has made the strategic decision to keep local fiction as one of its “main pillars,” with a new launch planned for this September.

Satirical Friday night show Stanje Nacije

Alongside these, says Litou, RTL shows “a mix of long-running evergreen original productions,” including local versions of Come Dine With Me, The Biggest Loser, Farmer Wants a Wife and Married at First Sight. “These are seasons and formats that keep coming back every year with great success. We keep refreshing them, we keep working on them,” she adds.

This spring, RTL also introduced a local version of the cookery show Hell’s Kitchen, which Litou describes as “a novelty in the reality entertainment field.” In addition, it successfully launched Idols last September, which has been “extremely well receive,” with the second season set to follow this year.

“Primetime during high season is dominated by original local productions. It’s a strategic decision to invest in local original content. Access primetime and primetime is fully original, with a couple of days a week [featuring] acquired movies,” she continues.

Litou also makes the point that RTL is “always looking for the next big format for the market.” In addition, she says: “We try to keep a very good balance between successful legacy brands and novelty; we are aiming for variety. But we see our audience at the same time coming back to their favourite shows in very high numbers. The retention rate is really high with our audience.”

Daily drama series San Snova (Dream of Dreams)

Litou’s position includes responsibility for Slovenia, where CME operates the national commercial stations Pop TV and Kanal A. 2024 is already proving to be “an exceptional year” for both channels, with the group share number above 50% in primetime. Pop TV introduced a new local fiction series titled Skrito v Raju (Camping Royals) two years ago, which is doing extremely well in previews on Voyo, and it also offers viewers popular shows such as Master Chef and Home Makeover.

In comparing the markets of Croatia and Slovenia, Litou says that it terms of market dynamics, they are quite different. While Slovenia is mature when it comes to both pay TV penetration and streaming service subscription numbers, Croatia has lower pay TV penetration and linear TV is more dominant.

Litou also notes that the behaviour of the streaming audience is different in the two countries. Another difference is that original content in the Croatian language travels to Slovenia but original Slovenian-language content finds it difficult to secure an audience in Croatia. She believes the sole reason for this is historical.

RTL’s Croatian adaptation of Come Dine With Me

Litou goes on to identify two major challenges facing CME’s operations in the Adria region. The first is what she describes as the “capacity of talent,” both in front of and behind the camera. “It’s our responsibility to push the future of this industry forward in terms of talent. To train, sustain and retain the talent is not easy. This is a challenge the industry is facing worldwide, but it’s magnified in smaller markets,” she adds.

The second is “how to be able to maximise the viewership and how to successfully utilise all platforms by windowing and by using our content,” through all the different methods of consumption. The aim is to be “the platform of choice for local content, whether that’s through linear TV channels or digital platforms,” comments Litou.

The exec also notes that, in Croatia, where all the international streamers are present, Voyo is on a par with HBO Max and ahead of both Disney+ and Amazon Prime in terms of brand recognition. While it has the ability to cross-collaborate with RTL’s linear operation to maximise reach, what ultimately sets it apart is local content, and this can be considered to be its USP.

Looking to the future, given RTL’s recent “excellent results” – it has led in primetime since 2016 – its course has been set. “We want year-on-year growth, to maximise the performance of our core business, which is linear,” says Litou. “We want to very successfully establish the originals on Voyo in the upcoming years and we want to be the leading player in the market.”