Conze: ‘one step at a time’ for Joyn but international launch planned

Max Conze

ProSiebenSat.1 and Discovery, the partners behind German streaming JV Joyn, “definitely will” launch the platform outside Germany – but not yet, according to ProSiebenSat.1 CEO Max Conze.

Speaking at MIPCOM, Conze said that the pair are “very focused on going one step at a time” to develop Joyn, starting with a free-to-view advertising-supported layer as the base.

Conze said that a premium layer would be launched “later in the winter” but declined to name a price point.

He said that once the premium layer was launched the company would look at pan European opportunities. However, he said that he was “100% certain” that the platform would launch internationally at some point.

Conze said he was agnostic about the relative merits of advertising versus pay as a business model for on-demand services but added that he thought the advertising model was more powerful.

He said that Joyn would commission about 20 originals next year, with an emphasis on edgier material than appears on linear TV.

However, he added, ProSiebenSat.1 would continue to focus on mass-participation TV which is at the core of the company’s appeal to German viewers.

Conze said that ProSiebenSat.1 had spent about EUR150 million on the platform to date. He said that, in Germany, the availability of 55 live channels plus on-demand content in one place was unique.

Asked about the absence of rival commercial broadcaster RTL from Joyn’s list of content partners, Conze said that he had a good relationship with RTL and Bertelsmann, citing the recently launched advertising JV between the pair. He said that there there “may be opportunities in the future” for collaboration in on-demand.