“We’ll never be cool, but we can try to be elegant”

How can TV attract the ever-elusive young audience? For European public broadcasters, the answer is to focus on streaming, which offers much greater flexibility in testing different content strategies.

Industry meetings at the Venice Production Bridge, a section of the Venice Film Festival devoted to discussing how platforms and broadcasters can help distribute domestic titles internationally in a saturated market, brought up a broader issue: how to attract young audiences, an issue that largely determines current audience acquisition strategies.

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“We are actively looking for audiences who no longer watch TV,” said Diana Tabakov, who works on acquisitions at Ivysilani, Czech Television’s streaming platform. “We are very good at reaching millennials and older, but it is difficult to do the same with Generation Z, which is a problem for all public broadcasters.”

Ivysilani has a team working on specific programming for Gen Z, including producing content for YouTube to encourage viewers to use its streaming platform. “Our platform is trying to find its identity. Young people think that TV is for their old grannies. I don’t mind that as a public media we will never be cool and sexy, but we can try to be an elegant lady, not a granny,” Tabakov added.

Maria-Pia Defourny, a programming manager at RTL Belgium, not only echoed Tabakov’s desire to appeal to public broadcasters in the Gen Z context, but emphasized how valuable streaming can be in allowing broadcasters to diversify their offerings—something that a rigid TV schedule can’t provide. “Our platform allows us to test other content. It’s a luxury to be able to offer our audiences the opportunity to discover.”

This flexibility is key for broadcasters not only in terms of appealing to uncertain demographics, but also in terms of taking risks on content outside the tried and tested. “Belgians are really focused on France, so we have to change something, and that’s not easy,” Defourny continued, adding that their streaming platform allows them to acquire and program series and films outside mainstream genres like comedy and thriller.

In the Arab world, streamers have spent recent years snapping up wildly successful American shows to populate their nascent platforms, a strategy that continues to work well for Rolli Karam, senior vice president of content acquisition and head of Arabic channels at Dubai-based OSN. “What sets us apart from other platforms in the region is that we stream shows on our platform at the same time as the U.S. It’s about timeliness and exclusivity, and also how we control piracy.”

OSN owns rights to broadcast shows from Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures and others, all on top of a wealth of Arabic, Turkish and Filipino content. With an established catalog of international shows, OSN is now shifting its focus to production, with Karam closely monitoring stories from festivals like Venice.

“During COVID, we produced a few adaptations, scripted and unscripted, but we stopped because we focused on big acquisitions. In 2025, we will be looking at offers, focusing on producing short scripted series and films. Because we have shows from networks like HBO, I need content that will fit in well but has to be relevant to the region. We go to festivals to find these stories and we don’t have a rule that there has to be a co-producer from the UAE, so we are open to collaborations.”

Tabakov is also considering in-house production, with a particular interest in nonfiction. “It’s hard to have local reality shows in the region, so we have to buy formats. We’ll be co-commissioning more and more. It’s more useful for (broadcasters) because they don’t have to be there as dramaturgical partners, and it supports local filmmakers in the region. There are so many great documentary filmmakers, and the series format isn’t common for them. It’s also, again, a great way to reach young audiences.”

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