Following her appointment last year as CEO of Nova Broadcasting Group (Bulgaria) by United Group, Stefana Zdravkova has been driving the strategy of NBG, focusing on creating more successful synergies of digital and traditional media and ensuring high performance and sustainable growth.
The company reported last March the biggest viewership result in its history: an average daily audience share of over 30% among the audience 18-49 y.o. To date, this is the highest rate for NOVA reported by a peoplemetric system since 2005.
In a recent interview, Zdravkova spoke about the good moment of the broadcaster in Bulgaria, and the strategy that gave her good results at the beginning of the year.
These figures, according to her executive, are possible by the successful formats Power Couple, Your Face Sounds Familiar and Hell’s Kitchen, whose first episodes broke all the strongest start records in the network’s history. ‘In this way, the signal leaves other competing channels far behind, and on some days it doubled the number two television network in the country’.
‘I would also like to point out that on April 2, when the parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria, NOVA dedicated almost 18 hours of its programming to the electoral contest. It is an extraordinary achievement that all of NOVA’s current affairs programs and newscasts were the leaders that day, among viewers in the coveted 18-59 demographic’, she said.
Regarding the content strategy, the CEO referred to the ‘large-scale’ investment that NOVA is making on its programming: ‘Our ambition is to offer rich and versatile content to the Bulgarian audience. We have several priorities, including devoting space to Bulgarian film content, exclusive sporting events, local shows, proven hit reality formats, and last but not least, high-quality news and topical content’.
Soon NBG will be announcing the main programming news for the following months of the year, in various genres and original plots. In addition to linear TV programming, the company also expressed viewers’ great interest in the series available on the NOVA Play and Vbox7 online platforms.
Zdravkova also referred to a highly demanded segment on her signal: sports content. After successfully broadcasting the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 4K resolution, and the Premier League in perfect picture quality, we continue to this long-term strategy, which it started March, when we started broadcasting the Formula 1 races as well in 4K for the first time in Bulgaria’.
Regarding original content on Nova Play, the executive was emphatic when classifying the platform as ‘effective’ with its AVOD model, adjudicating that it ‘brings more participation and income to NOVA content’: ‘This year, we are expanding the coverage of the platform, since it becomes multichannel. This means that we are going to integrate additional content sources. We are currently in the process of launching the studios for the Nova News, Nova Sport and Diema Sport channels. We also launched a podcast program, where various media presenters and outside guests will produce digital content in video and audio podcast formats. The most successful release here was Threesome at No Time, based on one of the most popular Bulgarian radio talk shows called Threesome in the Morning on Radio Vitosha, which is also part of Nova Broadcasting Group. Four other new shows will also arrive soon.
