ProTV owner partners Samsung to expand Voyo video-on-demand platform on smart TV sets

Consumer electronics producer Samsung Electronics has teamed up with media company Central European Media Enterprises, which owns the ProTV television channel in Romania, to bring CME’s Voyo transactional and subscription video-on-demand services onto Samsung Smart TVs. Voyo has been running in Romania since August 2011 as an online platform, voyo.ro, which runs pay-as-you-go videos, as well as monthly subscriptions, offering movies, as well as content from ProTV and other TV channels owned by the group.

“Our strategy is to increase our audience by growing the distribution channels [...]. One step in this direction is partnering with Samsung to deliver the content [...] in more homes across Central and Eastern Europe,” said Romanian Robert Berza, head of CME’s New Media Division. In 2011, CME launched Voyo, a subscription and transaction based video-on-demand portal, in the Czech Republic, and has since rolled out the service across Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The Voyo application should be launched during the second quarter of this year and roll-out across the countries where CME is active. CME, traded on NASDAQ and the Prague Stock Exchange, posted net revenues of USD 112.4 million in the first three quarters of last year in Romania, up from USD 109.1 million during the same period of the previous year. CME owns several TV channels in Romania: PRO TV, PRO TV International, Acasa, PRO Cinema, Sport.ro, MTV Romania, as well as PRO TV Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova. The company's CEO is Romanian investor Adrian Sarbu, who created ProTV and sold it to CME. Sarbu's existing investments in Romania include the Mediafax Group, comprising Mediafax newswire and Ziarul Financiar newspaper, among others. editor@romania-insider.com