Cooke seasons the originals mix

from Channel21 International: Summer 2023

FAST or famine

Warner Bros Discovery may not be serving up a feast of new domestic content in markets such as Central and Eastern Europe, but it is still looking to ‘pepper’ its schedules with local originals, according to general manager Jamie Cooke.

By Nico Franks

“Content providers around the world are doing it. You have to be honest and look at what’s working on the services that you’re providing,” says Cooke of the cutbacks, citing the macro-economic pressures that all international media businesses are under.

Over the past decade or so, HBO Europe has commissioned more than 1,000 episodes of original premium programming across scripted, documentaries and unscripted. Many productions that have received national and international award recognition, including The Pack and Blinded by the Lights in Poland, Burning Bush and Wasteland in the Czech Republic, Golden Life in Hungary and Collective in Romania.

HBO Max is set to be rebranded as Max in CEE next year and having begun its roll-out in markets Cooke oversees in early 2022, launching in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, North

Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. A proposed launch in Turkey was due in 2022 but hit the brakes following the change in strategy.

Originals will now be “peppered” across HBO Max in CEE, with the recently launched Spy/Master a case in point. Produced by Hungary’s Proton Cinema and Romania’s Mobra Films, it was released on the streamer globally on May 19.

Created by Adina Sădeanu and Kirsten Peters, Spy/Master is set during the height of the Cold War and covers a week in the life of the right-hand man and closest advisor to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, played by local actor Alec Secăreanu.

“It feels like the kind of show that has a very local relevance, but if you think about what’s going on in the world more generally at the moment with dictatorships, it is very relevant for audiences outside of Romania,” says Cooke, who arrived at WBD  in having been a Discovery veteran for almost two decades and will be a keynote speaker at C21’s Content Budapest at the end of June.

Another original HBO Max is gearing up for launch later this year is a Hungarian version of Banijay’s survival format The Bridge, which will be made by Free Monkeys Production and ﬁlmed around Lake Bells.

WBD also continues to produce documentaries in the region, with highlights including Boylesque and Naked.Loud. Proud, documentaries that focus on Poland’s LGBTQ community, and My Muslim Husband, a doc about a Romanian man who chooses to convert to Islam in the face of religious discrimination and prejudice.

“We have a strong slate of HBO documentaries and while they can travel, they’re much more local stories. We’re commissioning eight to nine a year of these and we’re trying to focus on topics that push the boundaries,” says Cooke, whose remit does not include Poland.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian doc No Place for You in Our Town and Polish docs Polish Prayers, Pianoforte and Apollonia Apollonia have each been recognised with awards in their domestic markets.

“We want stories that challenge preconceptions and push some of the social boundaries that exist in CEE and the Middle East,” says Cooke, who suggests some of these HBO docs could potentially ﬁnd homes on Discovery channels in region. “The message is, despite some of the news about cutbacks last year as the company came together, we’re very much still open for business.”

Within his role, Cooke also oversees WBD’s EMEA pay TV networks, which include Discovery Channel, TLC, HGTV, ID and, in Romania, Warner TV. Cooke believes CEE is a market where the wider industry’s obsession with streaming may be misplaced.

“When it comes to Central Europe, we don’t really see the cord cutting that’s happening in other parts of the world, like the US and Western Europe. In some countries we’re seeing pay TV growth,” he says. “I’m not suggesting it may not come in the future, but right now that is not the case. So the linear pay TV networks remain really important to the business, mainly because it’s where consumers are.

“Consumers in the region are very price-sensitive,” adds Cooke, who is keen to see Max, once it relaunches next year, position itself as a streamer that appeals to as broad an audience as possible, where premium dramas sit alongside lighter unscripted and reality fare.

Taken separately, HBO Max and Discovery+ could be viewed as quite niche streaming services. But once combined as Max, Cooke believes the service can attract subscribers with the eye-catching HBO content and retain them with the Discovery programming.

(FAST) channels may be growing in popularity as an alternative to SVoD in some markets, such as the US, but Cooke doesn’t expect a wave of launches in CEE anytime soon –though it may be a case of ‘watch this space’ in the Middle East.

“It’s something shiny and new so everyone gravitates towards that. There are real signs in certain markets that it can be a viable product. We will look at it opportunistically,” says Cooke. Meanwhile, WBD will continue to offer its pay TV brands across kids, general entertainment and nonscripted in CEE, where the WBD team remains on the lookout for acquisitions to add to the linear schedules.

For example, WBD and Sony Pictures Television recently extended their content deal across CEE, bringing TV series including Fox in the US’s crime drama Accused, ITVX in the UK’s drama Without Sin, AMC’s dark comedy Lucky Hank and Peacock’s upcoming action comedy

Twisted Metal to HBO and HBO Max

Twisted Metal to HBO and HBO Max across the region.

It’s all part of maintaining

It’s all part of maintaining a lucrative ecosystem for content, with pay TV at its heart, as Cooke looks to sustain the traditional TV business model that continues to provide a subscribers are going to be willing and Western Europe, people have there

“There’s an open question in my mind about how many services subscribers are going to be willing to take in the region. In the US and Western Europe, people have a tolerance for higher number of subscriptions than they have in CEE. I’m guessing there is space for three or four subscriptions, maximum,” he says.

Free ad-supported, streaming TV continues to provide a reliable form of revenue in the markets he oversees, especially compared with the volatility of streaming. “It’s a lazy thing to say streaming is the future. What kind of streaming are we talking about? Because there are many different ﬂavours to it,” he says.