"Experience with Munich makes me optimistic"
Private TV After TV-Munich and TV-Berlin, the launch of the Swiss U1 TV station is imminent. Werbewoche met its start-up manager Peter Kölbel.
So the remaining Swiss partners, who must have a majority stake in the station according to the Radio and Television Act, have now been found? Who is involved?
Yes, the Swiss partners are together. I can only answer the second question to a limited extent. We leave it up to each partner to decide if and when they want to go public. It is already known that Jakob Hlasek is involved.
How many partners are there in total, and from which background do they come? more than five, but fewer than ten. We have managed to find a mixture of partners who contribute knowledge and market expertise - including people from the media sector. During the selection process, we made sure that no partner would end up in a dominant position or mix private interests with those of the broadcaster. That's why the search for partners took a little longer.
Now that the start of the program is within sight, the many months during which your Managing Director Thomas Sadecky prepared the start of broadcasting almost alone in Schlieren should also be over - has the staff been found? the six-strong technical team is already in place. The final phase of the selection process is currently underway for the first tranche of around ten editorial staff. We expect to have recruited the first third of our team by the end of June. Over the summer, they will then complete basic training at our stations in Berlin and Munich. They will return to Schlieren in September, when we will start pre-production. The fact that we don't take on more than ten editorial staff at a time has to do with the training places: We can't train more at the same time. When they are ready, the next tranche will follow.
U1 TV station will only ramp up its program step by step? no, our program will be full from the start. However, it is quite possible that the Swiss connection will initially be somewhat underrepresented in one or two programs. And not all of our programs will be of the quality we want to achieve right from the start. That is why we are planning the first three months as a "test run". During this time, we want to observe how viewers react.
What about cable distribution - have you reached an agreement with Cablecom? This ensures that we will be represented in the cable networks right from the start. I can't yet say whether this will be a leading position, which is what we want.
U1 TV station can't avoid having to be
We have heard you say that you want to tap into other sources of income in addition to spot advertising and sponsorship. What are you thinking about?
In the medium term, we expect to generate one third of our revenue from traditional advertising, one third from special forms and one third from content exploitation. In the initial phase, traditional advertising will play a
have a disproportionately high share.
Telephony is to be an important pillar... We have brought in a Danish company as a partner for this - the country is a leader in these applications. The enormous potential of telephony was demonstrated by a test that our partner carried out together with the Danish lottery company. The public was invited to play the lottery via SMS. After just 17 minutes, one million text messages had been received - and this with only around six million inhabitants in Denmark! We are now thinking about how we can develop telephony so that we can also receive 100,000 calls, for example. And we are discussing what we need to offer viewers.
Has the advertising market crisis made it more difficult to set up?
No, it made us possible in the first place. It was only this crisis that freed up market positions, and only in its wake did the advertising industry develop a willingness to approach new solutions creatively - advertisers are interested in developing new approaches. We want to benefit from this.
You consider a market share of between three and five percent to be realistic. When do you want to achieve this?
That is a two-year forecast. However, our experience in Munich makes me optimistic: in the first year, we counted
an increase in viewership of 30 percent.
What role will you personally play at U1 TV-Station? I am not a shareholder in the operating company Kanal 1 TV AG, but its start-up manager. I will be coming to Switzerland in October and will be here for about six months. After that, I'll be working at our Berlin station again. The headquarters for program development will also remain here - because it's cheaper here and we have more infrastructure.
Invoices with cash via telephone: Peter Kölbel from U1 TV station.
Marketing still openU1 TV-Station, based in Schlieren, is the third of three channels of Kanal 1 GmbH, based in Vienna. TV.München was launched in June 2002, followed two months later by TV.Berlin. The launch of the Swiss station has been announced for October.
U1 will broadcast a mix of entertainment, news and documentaries every day between 4 p.m. and midnight. The station is hoping to generate a lot of interest with its own new reality formats, which will be broadcast in
Germany have already achieved "considerable viewer numbers and media resonance", according to Thomas Sadecky, CEO of Kanal 1 TV AG. Each of the three channels will produce three hours of regional content per day, which will not be shared with the other two channels. The form of advertising time marketing is still open. "We are currently discussing whether to outsource this to an agency, run it ourselves or implement a hybrid form," says Sadecky. The operating company of U1 is Kanal 1 TV AG. In addition to the Swiss partners, Kanal 1 GmbH, based in Vienna, is the largest minority shareholder. The latter, for its part, is the largest shareholder in TV.München and TV.Berlin. In addition to Thomas Sadecky, Marcel Nauer (former publisher of Ars Edition, Zug) and trustee Bruno Frey (Wil, SG) were elected to the Board of Directors of Kanal 1 TV AG. (dse)
Interview: Daniel Schifferle
