CME Boss Sam Barnett On The Power Of Local Shows, ‘Love Island’ And ‘The Bachelor’ In Central Europe & Beating Global Streamers At Their Own Game

Anyone tracking international media over the past few decades will already know Sam Barnett is a power player in the C-suite. He has been at the forefront of the production revolution in the Middle East and a television dealmaker who’s sat across the negotiating table with the top players at Netflix and the U.S. studios.

Best known as the long-serving CEO of Middle Eastern media giant MBC, the British-born exec this year made the move back to Europe when he joined Central European Media Enterprises (CME), the largest independent broadcaster in the central and eastern Europe programming to around 49 million viewers, as CEO.

Leaving MBC after 23 years (minus a short spell away in 2017) to lead CME in May, Barnett was tasked with continuing the group’s transition from a TV-first organization to a digital media giant with streaming at the heart of its future – much like counterparts in the U.S. and around the world.

Indeed, CME is a business with close Hollywood ties. Warner Bros. Discovery predecessor Time Warner took majority ownership of the group during the 2010s, having initially bought a 31% in 2009. AT&T then gained ownership after buying Time Warner in 2018, and then sold to current owner, international investment group PPF, whose new group co-CEO Didier Stoessel is Barnett’s predecessor at CME.

In his first interview since taking on the role, Barnett cuts a relaxed but focused figure as he talks to Deadline over Zoom from his base in Prague, Czech Republic – CME’s biggest market. He’s not convinced he’s yet a household name in the country or the region, at one point quipping about finding himself out of place on a table of famous local faces at the Český Slavík (the Czech Nightingale music popularity awards) in late November. “I was seated amongst a massive group of celebrities who I think wondered who on earth I was,” he laughs. “I was reliably informed that a lot of them were part our stable.” 

CME is indeed a key facilitator of talent in the six markets in which it operates – namely Czech Republic, Romania and Moldova (grouped as one), Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia. That list pretty much follows the pyramid of importance to CME, at least if money is the deciding factor, with Czech Republic accounting for €169M ($198M) of the €468M revenues the company made in the first half of this year, followed by Romania (€110M), Slovakia (€74M), Bulgaria (€47M), Slovenia (€37M) and Croatia, the smallest at €31M.

Part of the Kellner family-owned Central and Eastern Europe business group giant PPF since 2020, CME can count on significant bankrolling – with the trade-off being the need to be in a “leadership position or aspiring to a leadership position” in every market, says Barnett. He calls PPF “an interesting family company, but also a shareholder that prides itself on operational excellence,” adding: “There are all these verticals that PPF has which add value to the media ecosystem. That combination makes CME a very attractive place to be.”

Barnett is further helped by the fact former CME chief Stoessel is co-chief of the wider PPF business alongside Kateřina Jirásková, which Barnett says means having a boss who is “sympathetic to what drives media values.” Having the backing of such a figure, “Is always an advantage,” he says, adding: “CME has had a fantastic run under Didier and it’s my privilege to take over the reins when this company is performing extremely well.”

PPF was a key player in this year’s drawn-out battle for control of ProSiebenSat.1 Media. It had controlled 15% of the shares in the German company and at one point appeared to be working in lockstep with the eventual new owner, the Berlusconi family-led MediaForEurope, on a deal. However, a later offer to shareholders was turned down and the Berlusconis walked away with the prize.

While it’s clear central and eastern Europe is the priority for CME, we quiz Barnett as to whether the dangling carrot of a major German broadcaster in the group could have been an enticing part of his new role, and am met with a straight bat response, albeit with a hint that PPF could be an M&A player in the future. “I was brought in for CME in the six markets [I oversee], so I’ve been very busy over the last six months focusing on those,” he says. “But as I say, PPF is an interesting company. It is ambitious and has aspirations, so we’ll see what happens.”

Local hits

Within the CME group are networks such as Czech Republic’s Nova, Slovakia’s Markiza, Romania and Moldova’s Pro TV, Slovenia’s Pop TV and Croatia’s RTL, along with Oneplay, a Czech over-the-top video streaming and live television platform that launched earlier this year on the merging of the popular Voyo and rival O2 TV. While linear TV in the region is holding relatively strong – Romanians, for example, watch 5.5 hours of television om some Saturday nights, CME estimates – Barnett’s remit is to helm the move to a digital-first business model, similar to how he oversaw the establishment of MBC’s successful Shahid.

Key programs include Nova’s versions of The Bachelor and Love Island, Slovakia’s premium drama Sl’ub and historical drama series Dunaj, k Vaším Službám (Danube, at Your Service) and Pro TV’s news program, which Reuters ranks as Romania’s most reliable news source. The latter is a particular point of pride for Barnett and CME. Romania’s coalition government has survived no less than six confidence votes in six months, with its policies leading to demonstrations on the street and plenty of competing narratives among the public and press.

“When countries are going through these challenges, it’s extremely important that the news that goes out on linear is good quality – credible and without bias – because as we know, when people start to doubt the source of facts, bad things happen. That is why were very proud when Reuters this year said that Pro TV News was the most credible news in the country.

“In a very divided country, more people believe the news that are coming out of Pro TV than anywhere else. That’s the kind of thing which gives you real value not just for the news program, but for the TV channel and the media network in general.”

As for entertainment, Barnett once again refers to his evening at Český Slavík to demonstrate some learnings – this time the reach of The Bachelor. The series was the first in the world to employ twins as Bachelors, and they were on stage on that night. “They were presenting prizes and social media went absolutely wild,” he says.

Another global format hit has also been instructive in reality TV’s role in the streaming switch for CME. “Love Island was not something that I did a huge amount of in the Middle East, but it does huge audiences here,” says Barnett. “How our linear stations are able to use reality TV to drive audience online has been interesting because, for various reasons, that was less of a genre focus in the Middle East.”

Sl’ub, a historical serial drama about Slovakia’s socialist past, meanwhile, has proven CME’s reach there, taking a regular 30% TV share. When its stars were taken on tour across ten towns and an estimated 50,000 people turned up. “That’s almost a percentage of the population,” says Barnett (Slovakia has an estimated 5.5 million citizens). “We’ve got videos of screaming kids seeing the stars. I’m not sure how many places you could do that based on some of the dramas on linear TV in many countries.”

Another daily series for Slovenia’s Pop TV, Skrito v Raju (Camping Royals) took a 39% share after its launch last year.

The future for CME

For a man who has run businesses with complicated local politics and, in the case of MBC, in countries that regularly face heavy scrutiny over their social policies and laws, Barnett’s history is remarkably lowkey. He talks of having spent “23 years under the guidance” of MBC founder Sheikh Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim and leaving the broadcaster “on very good terms – I hope.” He is also fond of the family-run nature of PPF, with Renáta Kellnerová, wife of late company founder and Czech billionaire Petr Kellner, and her three daughters controlling 100% of shares through their Amalar Holding company.

What Barnett is much keener to focus on is building TV businesses. “The way that one can win both in the Middle East and in the CME markets is similar,” he says. “It’s about having premium local content for the proposition. “Having a strong linear heritage makes that easier. Then it’s a question then of making sure that you can fine tune your digital proposition to exploit all the values that digital has but with that same local content. That’s something that the international streamers will find more difficult to replicate.”

Barnett is bullish about CME’s prospects in a European streaming market that counts Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and Paramount+ among its competitors. He praises how the global giants’ algorithms have allowed them to affectively dictate taste and build advertising businesses, but says local players are now using new tools such as AI and increasingly sophisticated streaming services to level the playing field.

“It was difficult to get that from the people meter on TV,” he says. “As we now get a lot more data streaming in through our digital platforms – and we’re using some of these tools to analyze that – it means that we can recommend content in a much more intelligent way. That’s our next step forward. 

“We think that as we evolve this much more quickly than we could do before with AI, it puts us in a stronger position and again shortens that gap between us and the international streamers.”

In countries such as Germany and France, we’ve seen public service broadcasters and commercial networks team with international streamers to fund local shows – at the cost of handing the first window to their deeper-pocketed digital counterparts. We wonder if Barnett might consider the same, to boost the numbers of “premium level” shows (a phrase he is keen on). The answer isn’t the same as those in Germany France.

“Let me answer in a different way,” he says. “The fact that we have a successful streaming platform in each country and successful linear channels means that we should be able to amortize the costs and the benefits across those two platforms. I’m not sure why we would want to ultimately pass over windows in the markets where we’re trying to win.”

He goes even further, claiming he’d prefer CME to team up with other local players over streamers and other digital giants. “My sense in each country is that there are some local media and much bigger, more powerful international media, and to the extent that regulations allow us to cooperate with the local media, that is more of an opportunity than it is one of competition.”

Sounds like Barnett – and CME – are making a name for themselves in the CEE.