Kanal D Romania, the first Turkish-funded TV station abroad, will begin broadcasting on Feb. 18, already achieving substantial fame when it acquired the telecast rights for Romanias major league soccer matches
NURİ ÇOLAKOĞLU
The first TV station to be founded abroad with Turkish capital, Kanal D Romania, starts broadcasting this weekend. Of course, there have been TV channels in Turkey, such as EuroD, EuroShow and EuroStar, which aimed to broadcast to Turks living abroad. Even though its name Kanal D Romania is reminiscent of one of Turkey's most successful television stations, its content does not have much to do with the Turkish Kanal D. It has been billed as a general entertainment channel, created from scratch in Romania, aimed at Romanians and broadcasting in the Romanian language. The goal is to bring a high quality, energetic, dynamic, brand-new general entertainment channel to this fresh member of the European Union and to create one of the most-watched TV channels in Romania.
Similarity to Turkey:
Kanal D's parent company Doğan Publishing Holding (DYH) has also started work on continuing its operations abroad. DYH's investments in Germany are quite significant. Not only Turkish language newspapers, but also some of the world's leading publications are printed in and distributed from DYH's facilities near Frankfurt. However, these operations were, to a large extent, limited to print media and advertisement sales for TV channels broadcasting abroad.
Kanal D Romania is the first step in DYH's foreign ventures and is the product of two years of careful market research and hard work over the past year. Wanting to enter the foreign market, DYH first turned its attention to new Europe in the east of the EU. Romania was chosen as the first step with its population of 22 million, stable economy and growing television market.
The television sector in Romania resembled the one in Turkey and made for a promising market because even though there were some 100 television channels, viewers watched only seven or eight of them. Moreover, there was no fierce competition as there is in Turkey between these TV channels. The market leader introduced almost all innovations to the sector and the two rivals followed suit, as well as the state owned television. On the other hand, there were new formats, new broadcasting concepts that could be offered to the Romanian audience and an innovative and dynamic TV channel had a very good chance of winning over the Romanian audience.
This was the understanding that initiated the project. First of all the framework was established, its principle concept was determined and Kanal D Turkey's successful Director of Programming Hatice Soysev Kolat joined the team followed by DYH Vice President Begümhan Doğan Faralyalı as the general manager. Already working in Romania, Uğur Yeşil became head of finance, while the young broadcaster Doğa Özyürekli became in charge of technical structuring. While, four to five people backed this team from Turkey initially, the rest of the team was chosen from among the innovative and creative individuals in the Romanian television world.
A floor of a new office building constructed by Finansbank Group and Çapa Group was turned into the TV's administration and broadcast center and a nearby 2,500 square meter factory-building-turned-studio was rented, renovated and fully equipped. All the work was completed in six months and Kanal D Romania prepares to start broadcasting on Feb. 18.
Factory-turned studio:
Initially, Kanal D Romania will start broadcasting over cable, which reaches 76 percent of the urban population in Romania in addition to three major platforms transmitting via satellite. Furthermore, as the system in Romania allows it, per Kanal D Romania's agreement with local terrestrial TV channels across different regions of Romania, Kanal D can be viewed over these TV channels' frequencies, especially during prime time. Just as preparations were being finalized, state owned TV station TVR, which hold the broadcast rights to the most important matches in the Romanian soccer league, lost these rights, as it could not pay the license fee on time. When Kanal D Romania acquired the broadcast, all of a sudden newspapers were filled with articles, news and commentaries about Kanal D Romania.
