Chellomedia CE looks to HD and TV Everywhere

Chellomedia Central Europe plans to develop HD versions of its channels to exploit what it views as an opportunity to take advantage of relatively high penetration of HD TV sets combined with under-consumption of HD content.

Levente Malnay, CEO of Chellomedia Central Europe, said that HD set penetration in the region varied between 20-40% but actual consumption of HD services was currently minimal.

Speaking on a panel session on TV Everywhere at the CTAM Europe EuroSummit this morning, Malnay said that rights owners increasingly understood that the future of their product would involve letting viewers watch on multiple platforms. He said that some genres were easier than others to acquire rights for. For example, while Chellomedia had been successful in acquiring TV Everywhere rights for content to a number of its thematic channels, movie rights were much more difficult, he said. Malnay said that multiscreen applications could help content providers build brand loyalty and cited the example of applications around sports content as being particularly important.

Malnay said that Chellomedia had made significant content investments to make its central European brands as premium as possible. He said that the company had invested in local formats – notably for its cooking channel – and had simplified and conflated its lifestyle and factual brands into a single Spektrum Home channel. Investing in local production had to be done in a responsible way and Chellomedia had not, for example, invested in local programmes for its kids channels, choosing instead to create characters that could be used in interstitials to give the channels a distinct brand identity, he said.