Baltic broadcaster Duo Media Networks is launching a new streamer
https://kidscreen.com/2024/07/05/baltic ... -streamer/
Baltic media conglom Duo Media Networks is on the hunt for content to run on a brand-new streamer called Duo One that’s gearing up to launch this September in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Available in four languages—Estonian, Latvian, Russian and Lithuanian—Duo One will also offer on-demand and live channels. To populate its kick-off programming lineup, DMN is buying up combined linear and SVOD rights, as well as some catch-up rights. It’s also looking for exclusive streaming windows (three, six and nine months) on some content that will launch later on its linear channels.
Duo Media streams ahead in the Baltics
https://www.c21media.net/department/cee ... e-baltics/
As Duo Media Networks prepares to launch its first streaming service in the Baltics, CEO Jüri Pihel talks about the changing landscape in the region’s content industry and why coproductions are the way forward. [...]Pihel’s ambition is to hit half a million customers across the Baltics by the end of 2024 – a milestone only reached by the TV3 Group-owned Go3 at the end of 2023. [...]Looking to the future, beyond the launch of Duo Media’ streaming service, Pihel doesn’t envisage any more growth for Duo Media in Estonia. However, the company is still exploring possibilities in Latvia, where it already works with Telia and recently met with the Ministry of Culture.
Duo Media Networks traces its roots back to 1993 and the launch of Channel 2 in Estonia, at the time the country’s first TV channel backed by private capital. This subsequently expanded with the addition of two further channels (11 and 12) before its owner Eesti Meedia consolidated all three and most of its other media assets in 2017. Two years later Eesti Meedia was rebranded Postimees Group and in 2020 its TV and radio operations were transferred into a new company named Duo Media Networks. Also part of the group was Kids Network Television (KNTV), based in Tallin, which was headed up by Pihel and had previously acquired Sony’s pan-Baltic channels.
Estonia’s TV industry entered “turbulent times” five or six years ago, and while the public broadcaster ETV “reacted seriously and in a proper way” to the changes, the two leading commercial broadcasters Channel 2 and TV3 failed to do so – for different reasons, according to Pihel, who is also a former Viasat and ETV exec. TV3, which is part of
TV3 Group, started to produce and air “very simple trashy entertainment” while Channel 2 “read the audience wrong” and went in the opposite direction to ETV by targeting very young viewers. Both broadcasters, in effect, lost their purpose and as a result four years ago the public broadcaster found itself with a higher market share than all the country’s commercial stations put together.
“The most important [recent] development,” he continues, “is that we now have an environment comprising two big channels.
We had historically, for 30 years, three channels, almost the same size, but now we have ETV and Channel 2. That’s the biggest change.
TV3 has dropped so much on average, especially over the last year.” According to Pihel, Duo Media has grown considerably in the last four years and today accounts for 60% of sales in the commercial TV market in Estonia, with TV3 Group claiming the remainder.
