When showmanship pays off

This has been a good week. On Tuesday, Viasat Broadcasting’s Creative Services department won the Grand Prix Award as the best In-House Marketing Team of the Year at the PromaxBdA Europe Awards Show in Barcelona. Promax is an event that honours the best professionals in media marketing, promotion and design, and the Viasat team, led by Milene Wallin, got the recognition their hard and excellent work deserves.

 

Besides the award for best In-House Marketing Team, Viasat picked up a total of four gold awards and two silver awards. This is an outstanding performance. It shows that we have some of the best creative people in the industry working for us, making Viasat a success through their hard work and dedication, which they bring to the table every week.

And as if this wasn’t enough, our Norwegian TV3 and Viasat 4 channels have both been nominated for a total of five categories at the Norwegian Gullruten awards, which honour the best content and programmes in the TV industry in the country. The winners will be announced on April 10, and I look forward to seeing who won!

One of our mottos at MTG is “Celebrate Your Victories”, and I think that it is important to acknowledge and celebrate hard work, dedication and creativity. Of course, when the awards have been handed out, life goes on, but our ambition is to always reach for more than we think is possible, and to face every day trying to be better, stronger and faster than ever before.

Hans-Holger Albrecht

Past the trees there is a forest

I recently did a longer interview with the Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri. I like being able to do things like this once in a while, as there is seldom enough time during the shorter interviews we do as part of our financial results to spend time discussing our strategy and direction.

As I have pointed out before, the thing about MTG is that we are an international company, with a presence across more than 30 countries. If you look at all the different free-TV, pay-TV, radio and internet businesses, the number of areas where we’re active is even higher. At the same time, we have a strong connection to Sweden, which is our historic and cultural home. I know that our followers, shareholders and analysts understand how we are structured, but periodically, MTG’s Swedish roots get so much attention, that analysts and investors end up missing what MTG is all about.

The last couple of months have been one of these times. We lost some market share in Sweden at the beginning of the year, and our flagship TV3 channel was performing weaker than we would have wanted. It should go without saying that this is something that we are working on. Our goal is to always present our viewers with the best TV schedules and on challenging the incumbents in our markets. And we are doing just that, while also exploring opportunities provided to us by the localised ad market.

However, when people are focusing a little too much on Sweden, they tend to not remember that we have took a lot of market shares during the last year, not only in Sweden, but in all of our territories. That the Scandinavian ad markets are showing positive trends, with Sweden being very strong right now. That the macro economic situation in Eastern Europe is improving, even though the advertising market development is still quite slow in the region (though the Baltic markets are showing careful growth). That our pay-TV businesses are evolving, both in Scandinavia and in the Emerging Markets.  That we are taking focused and unhurried steps in Africa, building for the long term.

The point I’m making is that it’s sometimes easy to forget that there is a forest of opportunity in MTG, behind the green trees of Sweden, even though they are particularly lovely in the summer.

Hans-Holger Albrecht

MTG United for Peace has started – in Ghana

The first trials for MTG United for Peace Cup have been organised. It happened last weekend in Akrade near Akosombo in the Eastern Region of Ghana, with sponsorship from Viasat1, our first African free-TV station.

Right to Dream beat FIPACUM FC in the final match in the trials by three goals to nil and will represent Ghana in the MTG United for Peace Cup held in Oslo in October to coincide with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.

The trials in Ghana were just the beginning. Soon to follow are trials in Denmark, Latvia and Estonia. There will also be trials in Lithuania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Russia and Hungary.  Teams for MTG United for Peace Cup will also be selected from Sweden and Norway.

I’m really happy for the strong efforts by our dedicated organisations in each of those countries. Our employees are working together with local partners to make the trials happen and give the kids from troubled backgrounds the opportunity to travel to Oslo for the MTG United for Peace Cup.

Hans-Holger Albrecht

Proper survey done for Viasat1

It is the first proper survey done for Viasat1, our first African free-to-air TV channel which was launched in Ghana just over a year ago. It needed to be done as Ghana doesn’t have the kind of television audience measurement as we are used to from our other free-TV operations across Northern, Central & Eastern Europe.

When I read the survey I get proud of what our Ghanaian team has achieved in such a short time, even if the survey is only done in the four largest cities, Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast and Takoradi. According to Synovate, a US based research organisation who performed the survey, 28 per cent said they watched Viasat1 the most during a week, followed by Metro TV with 27 per cent.

We know we have programme content – including English Premier League, top movies and top series and a picture and sound quality – is superior to our competitors. According to Ghanaian authorities, 74.9 per cent in the country have access to Viasat1. We have built the channel from scratch. Enjoy the picture of the best of Viasat1′s sales people, together with me and Rune Skogeng, our Norwegian CEO, when they all visited the Swedish archipelago last summer for MTG Awards.

 

Hans-Holger Albrecht