Being a leader in Hungarian TV for the fifth consecutive month during this year, TV2 continues to maintain its leadership in daily and prime-time in all three key target groups (A18-59, A18-49, A4+). Gábor Fischer, Programming Director at TV2, talked with Prensario about the position of the broadcaster in the country, trends, and how the group has evolved regarding digital space.
‘In 2023 TV2’s success is due in particular to its local productions, especially Wheel of Fortune. The gameshow confidently dominates its time slot in all three key target groups’, added Fischer. In addition, the return of the USA format Let’s Make a Deal after almost 30 years made its debut on TV2 with outstanding success, its special episode past March 12th became the most-watched show this year in all three important age groups.
Also, Your Face Sounds Familiar, the Hungarian version of the Banijay format, returned early this year with it’s 9th season and delivered strong slot-winning results.
TV2 is maintain its position of offering entertainment to the audience that prefers content through free-to-air. ‘In a time when the streaming providers are offering new series or movies almost every week on their platforms the demand for local scripted shows seems declining on television’, remarked the exec, who emphasized that parallelly there is a ‘huge appetite’ for locally produced, original, non-scripted content (both daily as well as weekly) which offers a unique way of entertainment to the audience.
In this sense, TV2 has a current strategy of being the window of entertainment in Hungary, introducing brand-new formats meanwhile working on returning shows, like already-established brands that seem to deliver stable ratings. ‘So, in line with these trends our focus is on these genres, and we try to offer a great variety of them to our viewers,’ he said.
Regarding content seeks, TV2 has clear focus on game shows and reality formats, however, the group of channels are open to any new idea program. ‘With regards to finished programs we have 14 channels, so the acquisition variety is bigger: as for our main channel, TV2, Turkish series have an important role in the daytime slots, so we keep looking for new content and it is also a popular genre on our telenovela channel Izaura where we have two premier Turkish series slots’.
Besides TV2, US movies also have a key role on their movie channels Mozi+ and Moziverzum. Meanwhile on the series channels Prime and Jocky, they are primarily broadcasting US and German TV shows, with a strong focus for long-running procedural crime series. As for their kids’ channel (TV2Kids) and comedy channel (TV2Comedy), the main focus is on preschool animated series and well-known long-running sitcoms, respectively.
‘Additionally, we always keep an eye on strong brands for our lifestyle channel Fem3, cooking shows for TV2Séf, and male-skewed factual content for our sports channels Spíler 1 & Spíler 2‘, he added.
Responding to the evolution of the broadcasting business from linear to digital, Fischer said: ‘TV2 Group‘s main focus is its linear channels but of course, we keep evaluating the market and the changing viewing habits, especially with the appearance of the new streaming services’.
TV2‘s digital strategy is a more ‘cautious approach’, he explained, which is based mostly on the market demands and the new features are introduced step by step. First TV2 renewed its digital platform and launched an OTT service called TV2 Play in 2021, by now the number of registered users exceeded 1.3 million. In 2022 it generated more than 100 million video views.
TV2Play Premium, a dedicated platform for television operators was launched in March-2022 and is now available at the major television providers. The company’s first DTC pay package (ad-free) was launched past April under the name of TV2 Play Zero, and parallelly they also introduced its first television application.
