Petr Szczepanik
Biographic Data
| ID | 3687872 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Petr Szczepanik |
| GIVEN NAMES | Petr |
| FAMILY NAME | Szczepanik |
| SIGNATURE | SZCZEPANIK P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Charles University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4386-0735 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Streaming against the current: Reframing media power in Central and Eastern Europe through the rise of a regional media giant
This article challenges the dominant narrative that media development in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has shifted from globalization to “oligarchization.” Using original data from the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project, it examines the transformation of Central European Media Enterprises (CME) under Czech investment group PPF since 2020. Grounded in a critical political economy approach, the study analyzes CME's hybrid strategy c…
Playlisting the periphery: Platform intermediaries and East-Central European music visibility in Spotify’s geography
This article examines Spotify’s engagement with East-Central European (ECE) music markets, exploring how platformization intersects with peripherality. Using insights from the political economy of global media and platform studies, it situates Spotify within the asymmetrical geographies of platform capitalism, where peripheral regions are more consumption markets than cultural centers. While Spotify emphasizes egalitarian access through playlisti…
Peripheral allegories of platform capitalism: Carnival Row , Prague and the materiality of local labor
This article proposes a critical materialist perspective on the recent transnational mode of streaming production, which combines seamless global flows of capital, talent, technologies and fictional worlds with exploitation of differences in labor costs, national media regulations and financial incentives on the ground. Using concepts of ‘platform imperialism’ and ‘digital peripheries’ as points of departure, the article approaches the global str…
SVOD Production in East-Central Europe: Understanding the ‘Streamer Imaginaries’ of Independent Producers
Streaming from a digital periphery: Voyo as an East-Central European response to Netflix
Voyo, owned by Central European Media Enterprises (CME) and operating across six national territories, is currently one of the only three prominent transnational SVoD services based in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Under the new owner PPF, a Czech-based investment group which bought CME from AT&T, Voyo enjoyed unprecedented levels of investment in high-end original content, which resulted in a dynamic growth of subscribers from 2020 on…
Screen Industries in East-Central Europe
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book provides an alternative perspective into the audiovisual and media industries of eastern and central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In doing so, it offers insight into the ways the screen industries of small nations are positioned in and respond to globalization and digitalization. Petr S…
Omnivorous Careers in Small Markets: An Industry Perspective on Acting
The article proposes a conceptual framework for studying mutual relationships between media markets and acting career patterns. It draws on valuation theory of cultural intermediaries, which presumes that intermediaries are actively creating value and socially constructing markets. The Czech acting job market is considered as an example of a small, peripheral market lacking a fully developed and standardised intermediary sector of talent agents a…
Channels and Barriers of Cross-Border Online Circulation: Central and Eastern Europe as a Digital Periphery
This chapter looks beneath the purely quantitative data on cross-border availability by investigating audiovisual industry practices of online distribution from a peripheral, small-market perspective, using the example of export from the Czech Republic. Its key research question is: How have transnational VOD services integrated into the local industry ecosystem and to what extent have they changed the circulation trajectories of Czech films and …
HBO Europe’s original programming in the era of streaming wars
HBO Europe (HBO Central Europe’s pre-2012 incarnation) opened its office in Budapest in 1991. It then set up 14 national branches. Four of them (Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, and Bucharest) established original-programming departments responsible for supplying localized content to the HBO cable and on-demand services, positioning HBO ̓s brand in the region. Since HBO Europe recruited experienced UK producer Antony Root as VP of Original Programming, …
‘Dear Netflix…’: Informal local intermediaries on the periphery of the global VOD market
Academic discussion of Netflix has already highlighted the labour of localization that the global service has had to carry out or contract in order to operate smoothly across borders. But not much has been said about independent local players who help to align the service with local audiences, doing so often without any authorization or recognition, and who are still looking for a place in the new distribution ecosystem. Employing the perspective…
Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective
The media industries constitute an important sector of national and transnational economies; not only do they contribute significantly to the GDP of a country, they also serve cultural, political, and societal functions. Production conditions and the production output of the media industries are as much a result of their economic, cultural, political and societal environment as an influence on these spheres of life
An academic study of research literature on Czech television: The dawn of taking TV seriously
In 2017 the first television studies university programme in the Czech Republic was officially opened at Palacký University in Olomouc. However, television has been a focus of Czech academics and television and film reviewers and practitioners for a long time. This review aims to introduce various forms of academic thinking about Czech and Czechoslovak television, published both in Czech and English. It distinguishes four academic and one insider…
Post-socialist producer: The production culture of a small-nation media industry
This article focuses on a profession of key importance for understanding today's screen industries in Central-Eastern Europe: the independent producer. Using the approach of critical production studies, the article focuses on producers' 'reflexivity' to reveal how their professional identity is being constructed and how they are positioning themselves within the broader ecology of the media industry. By analysing a set of semi-structured intervie…
Behind the Screen
Conceptualizing production studies from a European perspective, the book evaluates the history of European thought on production: theories of practice, the languages, grammars, and poetics of film, pr
The State-socialist Mode of Production and the Political History of Production Culture
Recent studies of media industries, production cultures, and creative labor mainly approach contemporary Anglophone examples in a manner that suggests they provide universally applicable models. These studies therefore tend to disregard earlier historical precedents and alternative modes of production. One such alternative is provided by the screen industries of East-Central Europe. This region's production systems were influenced heavily by the …
Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures
Post-socialist producer: The production culture of a small-nation media industry
This article focuses on a profession of key importance for understanding today's screen industries in Central-Eastern Europe: the independent producer. Using the approach of critical production studies, the article focuses on producers' 'reflexivity' to reveal how their professional identity is being constructed and how they are positioning themselves within the broader ecology of the media industry. By analysing a set of semi-structured intervie…
Playlisting the periphery: Platform intermediaries and East-Central European music visibility in Spotify’s geography
This article examines Spotify’s engagement with East-Central European (ECE) music markets, exploring how platformization intersects with peripherality. Using insights from the political economy of global media and platform studies, it situates Spotify within the asymmetrical geographies of platform capitalism, where peripheral regions are more consumption markets than cultural centers. While Spotify emphasizes egalitarian access through playlisti…
An academic study of research literature on Czech television: The dawn of taking TV seriously
In 2017 the first television studies university programme in the Czech Republic was officially opened at Palacký University in Olomouc. However, television has been a focus of Czech academics and television and film reviewers and practitioners for a long time. This review aims to introduce various forms of academic thinking about Czech and Czechoslovak television, published both in Czech and English. It distinguishes four academic and one insider…
Behind the Screen
Conceptualizing production studies from a European perspective, the book evaluates the history of European thought on production: theories of practice, the languages, grammars, and poetics of film, pr
The State-socialist Mode of Production and the Political History of Production Culture
Recent studies of media industries, production cultures, and creative labor mainly approach contemporary Anglophone examples in a manner that suggests they provide universally applicable models. These studies therefore tend to disregard earlier historical precedents and alternative modes of production. One such alternative is provided by the screen industries of East-Central Europe. This region's production systems were influenced heavily by the …
Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures
Post-socialist producer: The production culture of a small-nation media industry
This article focuses on a profession of key importance for understanding today's screen industries in Central-Eastern Europe: the independent producer. Using the approach of critical production studies, the article focuses on producers' 'reflexivity' to reveal how their professional identity is being constructed and how they are positioning themselves within the broader ecology of the media industry. By analysing a set of semi-structured intervie…
Channels and Barriers of Cross-Border Online Circulation: Central and Eastern Europe as a Digital Periphery
This chapter looks beneath the purely quantitative data on cross-border availability by investigating audiovisual industry practices of online distribution from a peripheral, small-market perspective, using the example of export from the Czech Republic. Its key research question is: How have transnational VOD services integrated into the local industry ecosystem and to what extent have they changed the circulation trajectories of Czech films and …
HBO Europe’s original programming in the era of streaming wars
HBO Europe (HBO Central Europe’s pre-2012 incarnation) opened its office in Budapest in 1991. It then set up 14 national branches. Four of them (Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, and Bucharest) established original-programming departments responsible for supplying localized content to the HBO cable and on-demand services, positioning HBO ̓s brand in the region. Since HBO Europe recruited experienced UK producer Antony Root as VP of Original Programming, …
‘Dear Netflix…’: Informal local intermediaries on the periphery of the global VOD market
Academic discussion of Netflix has already highlighted the labour of localization that the global service has had to carry out or contract in order to operate smoothly across borders. But not much has been said about independent local players who help to align the service with local audiences, doing so often without any authorization or recognition, and who are still looking for a place in the new distribution ecosystem. Employing the perspective…
Digital Peripheries: The Online Circulation of Audiovisual Content from the Small Market Perspective
The media industries constitute an important sector of national and transnational economies; not only do they contribute significantly to the GDP of a country, they also serve cultural, political, and societal functions. Production conditions and the production output of the media industries are as much a result of their economic, cultural, political and societal environment as an influence on these spheres of life
An academic study of research literature on Czech television: The dawn of taking TV seriously
In 2017 the first television studies university programme in the Czech Republic was officially opened at Palacký University in Olomouc. However, television has been a focus of Czech academics and television and film reviewers and practitioners for a long time. This review aims to introduce various forms of academic thinking about Czech and Czechoslovak television, published both in Czech and English. It distinguishes four academic and one insider…
Screen Industries in East-Central Europe
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book provides an alternative perspective into the audiovisual and media industries of eastern and central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In doing so, it offers insight into the ways the screen industries of small nations are positioned in and respond to globalization and digitalization. Petr S…
Omnivorous Careers in Small Markets: An Industry Perspective on Acting
The article proposes a conceptual framework for studying mutual relationships between media markets and acting career patterns. It draws on valuation theory of cultural intermediaries, which presumes that intermediaries are actively creating value and socially constructing markets. The Czech acting job market is considered as an example of a small, peripheral market lacking a fully developed and standardised intermediary sector of talent agents a…
SVOD Production in East-Central Europe: Understanding the ‘Streamer Imaginaries’ of Independent Producers
Streaming from a digital periphery: Voyo as an East-Central European response to Netflix
Voyo, owned by Central European Media Enterprises (CME) and operating across six national territories, is currently one of the only three prominent transnational SVoD services based in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Under the new owner PPF, a Czech-based investment group which bought CME from AT&T, Voyo enjoyed unprecedented levels of investment in high-end original content, which resulted in a dynamic growth of subscribers from 2020 on…
Streaming against the current: Reframing media power in Central and Eastern Europe through the rise of a regional media giant
This article challenges the dominant narrative that media development in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has shifted from globalization to “oligarchization.” Using original data from the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project, it examines the transformation of Central European Media Enterprises (CME) under Czech investment group PPF since 2020. Grounded in a critical political economy approach, the study analyzes CME's hybrid strategy c…
Playlisting the periphery: Platform intermediaries and East-Central European music visibility in Spotify’s geography
This article examines Spotify’s engagement with East-Central European (ECE) music markets, exploring how platformization intersects with peripherality. Using insights from the political economy of global media and platform studies, it situates Spotify within the asymmetrical geographies of platform capitalism, where peripheral regions are more consumption markets than cultural centers. While Spotify emphasizes egalitarian access through playlisti…
Peripheral allegories of platform capitalism: Carnival Row , Prague and the materiality of local labor
This article proposes a critical materialist perspective on the recent transnational mode of streaming production, which combines seamless global flows of capital, talent, technologies and fictional worlds with exploitation of differences in labor costs, national media regulations and financial incentives on the ground. Using concepts of ‘platform imperialism’ and ‘digital peripheries’ as points of departure, the article approaches the global str…
Cultural Industries and Urban Development (10 works) · Business (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Intermediary (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (4 works) · Geography (4 works)