Inside CEE Television
- chrisdz3
- Jun 19
- 4 min read
Chris Dziadul, June 19 2025
Changes at the top for United Group
United Group, which is majority owned by BC Partners, has appointed Stan Miller as CEO and Libor Vončina as deputy CEO. As part of these leadership changes, Dragan Šolak, founder of United Group, and Victoriya Boklag, CEO, will step down from their current roles. United Group notes that the changes reflect United Group’s strategic shift towards EU markets, having successfully completed the monetisation of its telecom assets outside of the EU earlier in 2025 through the sale of SBB to E& PPF and the sale of Net TV Plus and its sports broadcasting rights in the Western Balkans to Telekom Srbija.
United Media expands Greek presence
United Media has received unconditional approval from the European Commission (EC) to acquire a 50% stake in the Greek free-to-air station Alpha TV from Primos Media Sarl. Alpha TV, in which Motor Oil Hellas holds the remaining 50%, itself owns a 50% stake in the production company Green Pixel. Alongside the transaction, Kiki Silvestriadou has been appointed deputy CEO and vice chair of the board of directors of Alpha TV. She will also continue to serve as the CEO of the Nova Media Greek pay-TV platform. Meanwhile, George Lamprou, CEO of Nova, a member of United Media’s parent company United Group, has been appointed a non-executive member of Alpha TV’s board of directors.
PPF bid for ProSiebenSat.1 “inadequate”
The executive and supervisory boards at Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1 have deemed the bid by Czech PPF Group to increase its stake in company to be “inadequate from a financial point of view”. Taking other factors into consideration, they have decided to not make a recommendation on the offer, issuing what they call a “neutral statement”. The acceptance periods for both the PPF offer and a competing one from Italy’s MFE will end simultaneously at midnight CET on August 13. Should PPF’s be accepted, its stake in the German broadcaster would increase to 29.99%.
New kids channel for Czech Republic
A kids channel named TraLaLa will shortly make its debut in the Czech Republic. According to local reports, it will be aimed at children up to the age of six and distributed terrestrially on a national DVB-T2 multiplex. TraLaLa, along with a sister channel named TraLaLa DSN, is already available in Romania. Both are operated by TraLaLa TV, a company owned by the Romanian entrepreneurs Alexandru and Cristina Badan. TraLaLa is in due course also expected to be launched in several other markets including Hungary.
Polish DTT licences extended
The Polish Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) has reportedly extended the frequency licences on the country’s second DTT multiplex (MUX 2) currently held by the broadcasters TVN, Polsat and Puls. The licences are valid for eight years, from July 7, 2025 until December 31, 2033, unlike the 15 years the broadcasters were hoping for.
Orange stops ad skipping
Orange Slovakia has restricted the skipping of commercials on the archives of Markiza channels it offers on its OTT and IPTV platforms. Local reports say that the measure applies to entire advertising blocks but in the future may be limited to three minutes per block.
Fraudsters target Latvian smart TVs
Tele2 has warned that fraudsters have become active in Latvia and are trying to steal sensitive personal data by attacking smart TVs. According to the company, the goal of the fraudsters is to obtain users’ bank account access data and credit card information. Most often, the attacks are directed against little-known brands and insufficiently protected devices, whose users tend to download third-party applications from unknown and untrusted sources. The fraudsters are using malware called Android-Vo1D, which targets users of Android devices, especially TVs, and over the last few weeks around 2,000 such attacks have been detected on smart TVs.
SVOD dominates Russian OTT market
Paid subscriptions accounted for 93.8% of OTT (online cinema) services in Russia in 2024. According to research undertaken by Rostelecom and the Institute for Internet Development (IRI) and published in the local media, ad revenues were 12% higher than the previous year despite their share of the total falling to 6%. Okko and Wink saw their revenues grow the most in 2024, up 85% and 59% respectively on the previous year.
Gazprom-Media to combine digital platforms
Russia’s Gazprom-Media will combine Rutube, Premier and Yappy into a single platform in the first half of 2026. Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, the company’s general director Alexander Zharov added that process has been under way for two years and there is already a single subscription for the platforms. Zharov also said that the video platform Rutube is growing rapidly in popularity, being visited by 16-21 million a day and around 80 million each month.
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