Local broadcasters must join forces and build stronger alliances if they hope to compete with global streaming giants, Antenna Group CEO Henning Tewes argued during his keynote session at NEM Dubrovnik.
Speaking in a conversation moderated by Deadline International TV Co-Editor Jesse Whittock, Antenna Group CEO Tewes outlined what he described as the first of his “Six Theses on the Future of Entertainment,” focusing on the growing imbalance between local media companies and global technology-powered entertainment ecosystems.
According to Antenna Group CEO, the entertainment industry should not define itself simply as a content business. Instead, he argued, companies are fundamentally in the business of creating attention, building immersion through content and experiences, establishing trust in their brands, and ultimately monetizing audience belonging.
“In a highly fragmented and noisy media environment, creating attention is not simply a matter of producing more content or even better content,” Tewes said. “Great content can still get lost.”
To explain the challenge, he introduced the concept of “gravity” — the ability to attract audiences and keep them coming back. For Tewes, gravity consists of both the weight that pulls consumers in and the attachment that encourages long-term engagement.
He argued that global players such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, YouTube and TikTok possess enormous advantages because they operate as integrated ecosystems that combine content, technology, data, advertising capabilities, direct consumer relationships, intellectual property franchises and substantial financial resources.
By contrast, local broadcasters rely on strengths such as cultural relevance, language, proximity to audiences and trusted news brands, but face the limitation of significantly smaller domestic markets.
Tewes also suggested that traditional regulatory approaches have underestimated the true competitive landscape by focusing primarily on competition among national broadcasters. Today, he said, local media companies compete directly with global streaming platforms and technology companies for audience attention.
As a result, Antenna Group’s CEO called for greater collaboration across local media sectors, arguing that partnerships, strategic alliances and consolidation can provide the scale necessary to finance, distribute and monetize content effectively.
“Building scale creates weight, and weight creates gravity,” he suggested, emphasizing that cooperation among broadcasters and distribution platforms would make local-language content easier for audiences to discover.
Tewes pointed to recent consolidation efforts within the European media industry as evidence that even successful broadcasters increasingly recognize the need for greater scale in order to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving entertainment landscape.
Antenna Group’s message was clear: without stronger alliances and easier access to local content, national broadcasters risk being overshadowed by the growing gravitational pull of global entertainment platforms.
