After his failure in the market, Dragan Šolak, owner of United Group and SBB, has decided to withdraw from the Serbian market and has set up a crisis business model. Instead of fighting to bring back users by investing in content and TV channels, his company, SBB, has announced removing TV Prva and TV B92 (rumour has it that this includes TV Happy as well) from his network. It has also sold the most viewed formats from its production to TV Pink despite the announcements of greatly enhancing the Nova S programming.
Šolak is practically putting all his eggs in the basket of the political reality TV produced by N1 and Nova S, thus turning SBB into a political organization aimed at getting the best price for the upcoming sale. This explains why SBB enters into direct political clashes with the government and its officials more and more often and in an increasingly vulgar manner.
Kurir reveals the true background to these decisions and debunks the attempt to manipulate the general public by unscrupulously diverting attention to the political sphere. We will follow this topic intensively in the days to come because it is in the interest of the general public and the citizens of Serbia, being fully aware that we will be targeted by Šolak's mechanism.
Removing TV channels and content while disregarding their users
The decrease of SBB's market share from 55 to 43 percent and the constant drop in the number of users are a result of the drastic decrease in the high-quality content on the SBB network. Their TV channels have low viewership ratings, N1 and Nova S are stagnating and are becoming less profitable, while their sports channels – until recently the cream of their crop – are in "free fall" in terms of viewership ratings due to losing the rights to the most attractive football competitions, which have moved to their competitors.
Losing users naturally adversely affects the company's account balances. When you add the increasing indebtedness of United Group, it is clear that the only solution is cutting the content costs on the SBB TV platform, which goes directly at the expense of their users, who will be getting less and less high-quality programming/TV channels for the same amount of money. Sources from the company itself testify to these facts for Kurir:
"It is clear to our management (i.e. the management of SBB/United Group) that the company has lost the market game. Telekom is now in the lead not only with respect to the market share, but also in terms of television content production. An additional problem that SBB/UG faces are low viewership ratings and the small share of TV N1 and TV Nova S, owned by us. The investments were bigger than the achieved revenues. Not only has an increase in revenues, which was expected, not taken place, but the exact opposite happened," noted the Kurir source from the very top of United Group.
No money for Nova S programming either
Our source also says that "it is dubious whether SBB has the 38 million euros to pay for broadcasting the packages of TV Prva and TV B92 in the first place."
"Because it is obvious that United Group, despite the fact that it seeks to get a national frequency and announces investments in Nova S programming, and that it apparently endeavours to turn it into a highly commercial entertainment television, rather than broadcasting on that TV channel the most commercial content from its production, such as the TV shows 'Zvezde Granda' ('The Grand Stars') and 'Nikad Nije Kasno' ('It's Never Too Late'), it sells this content to TV Pink. This clearly indicates that United Group neither has any more money for further investments, nor is it under the illusion that its TV channels, such as Nova S, can get higher viewership ratings, let alone believing that they can become profitable," our source from the top of the United Group explains.
don't miss out
In support of the fact that they don't have enough money, our source reveals that due to the small profitability of Nova S and N1, the top officials of United Group are now putting pressure on its media marketing company Direct Media (which Šolak purchased from Dragan Đilas in a mysterious and non-transparent way) to set aside more and more of their clients' funds for these poorly viewed channels owned by SBB, which constitutes non-commercial actions and goes directly against the interests of the clients of the agency whose money is being squandered.
Independent observers, as well as the sources from United Group, also point out the fact that, in the year in which he is selling the cable operator SBB (which is an operation regarding which the negotiations are almost finalized), Šolak must not let his company invest additional funds into TV channels/content. According to some estimates, the 38-million-euro sum that SBB would have to set aside annually to broadcast TV Prva and TV B92 would reduce the value of that company by nearly 400 million euros!
Šolak's manipulation of the general public
In such circumstances, Šolak has realized that any further investment in content production and anything that improves his business in the cable operator and media market is no longer profitable for him, which is why he has directed his remaining – increasingly smaller – investment potentials to politics and the political and media instruments which could bring him some benefit in the area of politics. This is the main reason why they never had the intention to make an offer for TV Prva and TV B92 in the first place.
Short of money and finding himself in a narrow manoeuvring space left to him, Šolak has decided to seek rescue in intensifying the politicization of his own business by feigning to be a victim of the actions by the Serbian state institutions with the aim of securing prior to the sale the privileges which are inaccessible to other market actors, e.g. the national frequency for Nova S, a privileged price for TV Prva and TV B92 channels, as well as refusing to register his TV channels in Serbia, getting a licence to build a 5G network, and much more. In these endeavours, the most unscrupulous Serbian tycoon has never shrunk from any means, and Kurir has clearly identified in its numerous analyses the complex political and media mechanism which the owner of United Group set up to attack anyone standing in the way of realizing his private interests.
Šolak's deep bow to TV Pink
And while he once used to attack anyone who, from his standpoint, was on the other side, now, aware of his lack of resources and opportunities remaining to him, Šolak is making moves that were inconceivable until recently. In their latest decisions, SBB and Dragan Šolak have chosen TV Pink as a key partner for their programming and, you could say, "took a deep bow" to Željko Mitrović and TV Pink in their announcements (TV Pink being a media company that Kurir has good relations with) by recognizing his work and results.
These sorts of actions make it clear that the owner of United Group is attempting at the same time to continue waging his political war against the current authorities in Serbia and Telekom as his main competitor, but also that he is now seeking a way out and a lifeline for himself and his faltering business through those that he until recently branded as, and accused of, being the media pillars of those very authorities.
(Kurir.rs)
