Forefronting Its VOD Offer, Catalonia’s 3CAT Presents the New Face of TV in Spain
18.10.2023 - 09:39
/ variety.com
3CAT, the name also of its new AVOD platform, bowing as the driver of the most far-reaching digital makeover of any TV operator in Spain. Also incorporating Catalunya Radio, the Catalan-language 3CAT reflects a larger pivot in Europe where broadcasters are starting to look at their VOD platforms as either SVOD profit centers, or at least as a very key part of their business.
This is the case of state-owned networks as they seek to reach out to catch an ever larger part of the audience which doesn’t watch TV on TV, so still fulfilling their public service remit. This trend can be seen in and outside Spain, with France Télevisions and the BBC moving their OTT offer front and enter when it comes to acquisitions.
No other operator in Spain is driving harder to a hybrid OTT-linear offer than 3CAT, which serves Catalonia, from Barcelona, its capital, to Lleida in the West, the Ebro river in the South, and to the North the Pyrenees on the French border. “In order to give you an idea of 3CAT’s public broadcasting service ambition, we are creating more than 200 hours of digital exclusive 3CAT original content, including talent shows, factual series, fiction series and documentaries,” Pío Vernís, 3CAT audiovisual business director, said at Mipcom.
He added: “We are also adding around 150 hours of fresh entertainment from around the world, mainly fiction and factual, and around 20 original 3CAT digital-first shows, premiering on our VOD platform, and then to be linear broadcast.” At Mipcom, Vernís, eagerly talked up 3CAT banner scripted series “This Is Not Sweden,” a four-country co-production, as a prime example for the new direction which 3CAT will be taking. Co-produced by Spain’s RTVE and TV3 with Sweden’s SVT, Germany’s NDR
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