Incorporated: 1991 as Zonevision Ltd.
NAIC: 512191 Teleproduction and Other Postproduction Services
SIC: 7819 Services Allied to Motion Pictures
Chello Zone Ltd. is a major developer of television programming. The company develops, produces, broadcasts, and distributes a bouquet of themed television channels. The U.K.-based company's programming operations focus on developing highly specialized and niche formats that, as the company puts it, "respond to gaps in the media market." Among the company's offerings are flagship Zone Reality (formerly known as Reality TV), which features unscripted and reality-based programming; Zone Romantica, which features telenovelas, soap operas, and other drama and variety programming designed to appeal to a largely female audience; JimJam, a children's oriented channel; and Zone Europe, specializing in European-made commercial films. Other Zone channels include the Extreme Sports Channel, Zone Horror, Zone Thriller, and Club Zone.
Zone has long been one of the most international of television programmers, having been founded to provide U.K.-made television programs for the Eastern European market. In 2007, the company's programming reached more than 126 countries, and was available in 24 languages. The company operates its own network of production studios providing voice-over, dubbing, subtitling, and other localization services for its own and other television programming. The company operates studios in the United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Russia, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Serbia. These studios support channel representation, the group's other major area of operation for Chello Zone. The company acts as a representative for more than 28 channels, including MTV and VH1, Discovery, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, and Turner Broadcasting's TCM, negotiating carriage deals, and providing localization, marketing, administration, and other management support services. This division is especially active in the Eastern European and Middle East regions. Founded as Zone Vision in 1991, Chello Zone has been 90 percent owned by Chellomedia, the content division of Liberty Global, since 2005. The company changed its name to Chello Zone in 2007. Founder Chris Wronski remains the company's chairman, while Dermot Short serves as company CEO.
Selling Music Programming to Eastern Europe in 1991
Polish-born Chris Wronski immigrated to the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 1980s. Then 20 years old, Wronski received training from the Overseas Film School in London's Barbican district. Wronski's interest in music led him into managing bands and operating a small music studio by the end of the 1980s. At the same time, Wronski had also been involved in organizing concerts and music festivals.
The beginning of the 1990s provided a fertile period for Wronski's future business interest. The collapse of Communism and the end of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe introduced a surge of interest in Western music, films, and television broadcasts. At the same time, the arrival of new satellite broadcasting technologies promised not only wider distribution possibilities, but heightened demand for the programming to fill their channels.
Wronski spotted an opportunity to use his contacts in the British music industry to sell music television programming to Polish broadcasters. In 1991, he founded Zone Vision for that purpose; the company quickly became an important intermediary for music and sports events programming in Poland, and soon throughout Eastern Europe.
In 1992, Wronski was joined in the business by Chris Sharp, who became one of the company's shareholders and later served as both chief programming officer and general manager. Sharp brought his own programming sales experience to the company, starting with a stint at The Music Channel in 1986, followed by Super Channel, and finally at the Music Box channel in 1989. At the Music Box, Sharp took over direction of the channel's international programming distribution operations.
Zone Vision's success helped position the company as one of a very small number of intermediaries covering the Central and Eastern European broadcasting market. The company's operations took a new direction early on when MTV approached it to act as its representative in these markets.
Media Intermediary in the Mid-Nineties
The deal with MTV came at an important moment for the company, which then consisted of Wronski, Sharp, and one other partner. The company incorporated, as Zone Vision Limited, in 1994. In that year, the company's annual revenues topped $500,000. Yet the market for music festival broadcasts had already peaked. Wronski recognized that the company's focus had to shift to providing broader television content.
Zone Vision proved highly successful in expanding the MTV brand across the Eastern European markets. The company also developed experience in localizing the popular channel's programming. Before long the company had built a network of recording and production studios, where it offered services including dubbing, voice-overs, and subtitling, as well as developing localized content.
The company's success with MTV attracted the attention of other broadcasters eager to expand their own operations into the Eastern markets. The company quickly signed up a number of major channels, including VH1, Discovery, Animal Planet, Eurosport, Hallmark, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Channel representation remained an important part of the company's operations, and by the midpoint of the first decade of the 2000s Zone provided representation to more than 30 top channels.
Adding a Programming Wing
Through the 1990s and into the next decade, Zone supported its growing operations through the creation of a network of branch offices. These appeared in most of the region's capital cities, including Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Sofia. The company also became active in the former Soviet Union as well, adding offices in Moscow and Kiev. By 1999, the company operated nine offices throughout the Central European zone.
By then, the company had begun developing its own programming operations. Zone Vision's entry into this side of the television broadcasting market appeared a natural extension of its business, particularly its robust localization and production studio operations. At the same time, the steady expansion of satellite technologies provided space for an ever increasing number of channels.
Zone Vision recognized the possibility of creating its own range of channels. For this, the company targeted niche and specialty markets that remained underdeveloped, and which also allowed the company to avoid direct competition with the programming of its channel representation customers. In particular, the company spotted the potential for introducing the telenovela, a type of television soap opera highly popular in Latin American markets, to an Eastern European audience.
The company began buying the rights to popular telenovelas, and began producing localized versions for broadcast on its first channel, Romantica, launched in Poland in 1998. The strong success of the channel led the company to prepare a wider rollout throughout the region. By 1999, the company had prepared the launch of Russian and Romanian versions of Romantica as well. Rather than rely solely on the telenovela format, however, the company began broadening Romantica's range of programming to include variety and other programming to appeal to a largely female audience.
Romantica attracted attention beyond the Eastern European market, and by March 1999 the company had signed a deal with Israel's DBS to launch versions of Romantica in Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian there. The company also had developed a number of other successful channels by then. These included the adult-oriented Private Blue and Le Cinema, later known as Europa Europa, which was dedicated to broadcasting European-produced films.
Zone Vision continued to work with other broadcasters as well. In 1999, the company formed a partnership with E! Entertainment Television Networks to launch a localized version of the E! channel for Polish, Russian, and Romanian markets. Yet the company's own production efforts remained central to its growth strategy.
Reality Flagship in 1999
The success of a new generation of so-called reality programs gave the company a new idea at the end of the 1990s. In 1999, Zone Vision launched a channel dedicated to this type of programming, called Reality TV. Formed as a joint venture with United Pan-Europe Communications, the new channel became the company's most successful, and served as a flagship for its entry into a number of new markets into the 2000s. Reality TV especially enabled the company to expand beyond its core Eastern European markets, and by 2000 the company had placed the channel, along with Private Blue, in the United Kingdom. By 2001, the company had also launched its first operations, starting with Reality TV in the South American broadcast market as well.
In order to fuel its further development plans, which included the launch of a new channel concept called Speed TV, Zone Vision began seeking new investment capital. In May 2001, the company sold shares to investment group Advent International in exchange for $12 million, a deal that valued the company at $100 million.
Cracking the United States in 2003
As part of the Advent investment, Wronski moved into the chairman's position, while the company's day-to-day operations were placed under new CEO Dermot Short. Short had helped found Discovery Networks Europe in the 1990s, helping to expand its operations to a total viewership potential of more than 92 million viewers. Soon after his arrival at Zone Vision, Short led the company on an ambitious growth strategy.
A centerpiece of the company's new strategy was the company's decision to enter the U.S. market, starting from 2003. Once again, Reality TV played the role of company flagship, and by September 2003 the company announced it had reached a deal with Echostar's DISH Network to begin broadcasting a localized version of the channel to the U.S. market.
The successful entry into the United States encouraged the company to seek new frontiers for its programming. Zone Vision targeted entry into Asia, specifically the Japanese, Chinese, and Indian markets. The company quickly reached a deal to launch Reality TV in India as part of the Zee-Turner offering. The company also launched negotiations to acquire blocks of programming in China as well.
New Owners and New Name for the New Century
By 2005, Zone Vision had expanded its total viewership from just seven million to more than 150 million subscribers around the world. The company prepared to move to the next level. For this, the company sought a major partner, and in 2005 agreed to sell nearly 90 percent of its shares to global cable television giant Liberty Global Inc. Wronski nonetheless remained onboard as chairman of the company, which was placed under Liberty Global's own programming arm, Chellomedia.
The acquisition by Liberty Global enabled the company to transform itself once again; by 2007 the company's total subscriber base topped 350 million worldwide, with broadcasts in more than 125 countries, and in 24 different languages.
The company launched a rebranding exercise, which included changing its own name, at first to Zone Media, and finally, in October 2007, to Chello Zone Ltd. At the same time, the company rebranded its growing list of channels, most adopting the Zone brand.
Chello Zone had continued to roll out new channels in the meantime. In 2006, for example, the company launched a children's television format, JimJam, featuring such series and characters as Bob the Builder, Barney and Friends, Pingu, Fireman Sam, and others. The company also created Zone Horror, which began broadcasting in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom; Zone Thriller in the United Kingdom, and Zone Fantasy, which launched on the Sky Italia platform in 2006. Chello Zone had successfully transformed itself from its focus on the Eastern European market into one of the world's most dynamic television programmers.
Principal Competitors
British Broadcasting Corporation; Pinewood Shepperton plc; HIT Entertainment Limited; VTR plc; Central European Media Enterprises Ltd.; SMG Productions Limited; Aardman Animations Ltd.; Ginger Television Productions Limited.
Further Reading
"Asia's Television Industry Is Talking About ... Rebranding Strategy for Zone Vision," Television Asia, July-August 2006, p. 6.
Carugati, Anna, "Zone Vision's Chris Wronski," Worldscreen, April 2005.
Clarke, Steve, "Dutch Land Horror," Daily Variety, October 31, 2006, p. 6.
------, "UK Channel Outfit Looks to New Ideas and Asia to Stay in the Zone," TV International, November 21, 2003, p. 10.
Forrester, Chris, "Europe's Zone Vision Eyes More Countries," Multichannel News, May 8, 2000, p. 166.
Jaffe, Joshua, "Zone Vision Attracts $12M in First Round," Daily Deal, May 10, 2001.
Meils, Cathy, "Zone Vision Expands East Euro Operation," Variety, March 8, 1999, p. 56.
Szalai, Georg, "Liberty's China TV Picture Clearer," Hollywood Reporter, June 24, 2005, p. 12.
"Zone Vision Channels Broaden Their Outlook," Television Business International, May 1, 2004.
"Zone Vision Launches Channels in Russia, Renews MTV Contract," Television Europe, January 2001, p. 7.
"Zone Vision's Reality TV Cracks the US Market," Television Business International, September 1, 2003.
"Zonemedia Programming Heads for Global TV Distribution Platform Joost," M2 Presswire, June 6, 2007.
— M. L. Cohen
