Lenka Szanto is the woman behind the success of Voyo's biggest hits in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In this exclusive interview for CEETV, she tells Yako Molhov about the transition from journalism to production, her role in the development of Voyo's original series and what stories are "the good ones" for the streamer's premium offer. The two also discuss the ever-changing creative challenges and the evolution and trends in the fiction segment in Czechia, but also in the CEE region.


Lenka, you have an impressive background as a journalist and more recently as a creative producer. How did your career transition from journalism to TV production happen?

That’s easy – I’ve had kids. You know, as a teenager I dreamed of becoming April O’Neal, the character of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And then I did become her. I’ve had my share of night shooting, quick rides to crime scenes, adventures. When I became pregnant, I was ready to let it go. Of course, I did not switch straight from journalist to producer. I spent some 10 years working as a freelance screenwriter, then I came back to TV Nova as a story editor/dramaturgist and then, when we kicked off fiction producing on our own VOD platform, I became creative producer – overseeing the whole process of developing, producing and launching new series.


As a creative producer at Nova/Voyo, what are your main responsibilities, and how involved are you in the creative decision-making process?

Let’s say I have the first and the last word in most of the creative decisions and the right to veto – and I rarely use either. Every series is a collaborative work and the best a producer can do is let the talents grow and multiply among themselves. Philosophically speaking. Practically – we, creative producers at Nova/Voyo, co-decide which pitch to commission, we oversee the whole development process, then pre-production, production and post-production, co-create the task for visual, graphic, campaign departments, cooperate on PR and marketing activities during the launch period, evaluate the results, coordinate the possible festival and/or sales travelling. One could say: we are there when the series is conceived, and we don’t let it out of our sight until it graduates from university.


You have a deep knowledge of the specifics of true stories development: projects like the two-part TV movie Metanol, the 2022 Voyo original Morning Glow and most-recently, the NEM Awards winner for 2024 - The Extractors. What are some of Nova and Voyo's other successful projects based on true stories?

There’ s many of them - it’s the core focus of Voyo. For example, Mathematics of Crime got the Czech Lion Award for the best TV miniseries, The Markovič Method: Hojer won Serial Killer in Brno as the best CEE Series of 2023 and there’s many others: Guru, Roubal and the latest Voyo-views-record-breaking series The Well. And, of course, there is many more in the pipeline.


Voyo, especially in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, has been expanding its original content library significantly. What is the strategy behind choosing which stories to develop for the platform?

The good ones!
As I said: the main focus of ours are the local true crimes and true stories. We’ve been significantly successful with the “light mystery” genre as well. But – I doesn’t really matter which genre do the producer or writers offer to us – there’s only one criterion we insist on: the story has to be strong locally.


Czech audiences have responded well to local premium series on Voyo. What do you think makes a Voyo Original stand out in such a competitive market?

Everything I would say here can be summed up to one word: quality. The quality of creators that come to collaborate with Voyo, the great and long tradition in filmmaking in the Czech Republic – and also the high taste of the SVOD audience – these are the main pressures on us to be even better with the next series. And also: being a part of a big corporate means one thing: with every success we create a new benchmark for ourselves. So, not only we want to be better than last time – we need to. Otherwise, our boss would be grumpy.


What is the role of Voyo Originals and how is Nova balancing linear TV content with digital-first productions?

I’d say Voyo stands on four strong pillars: Voyo Original fiction projects and documentaries, Voyo successful R&E shows such as Survivor, the Bachelor or Love Island, linear TV (Nova) content library and acquisitions. It’s the synergy of all four that makes Voyo successful and growing. How that synergy is achieved is more a question for our Program Director – I’d guess she is a great alchemist.


What are the biggest creative challenges in developing original scripted content in the Czech Republic?

If you’d ask me a year or two ago – I’d say we can do everything on a European level – production-wise – except the scripts. We struggled to get them right or in time. But in such a dynamic environment the writers learned quickly. I don’t feel we have that problem anymore. Sure, there are bummers in the development and obstacles to overcome, but the market developed, and we already know how to fix when something is broken.


Can you share any upcoming projects you are particularly excited about?

Hmm, alright. There’s a particular “golden kid” in our pipeline – literally. The project Record(wo)man tells a true story of our famous 1930’s athlete Zdena Koubková, the fastest woman runner in Europe at her times. Except she was not a woman. Not a man either. Zdena was born as an intersex person into a poor family in Moravia, looked more like a girl as a baby, so she was raised as a girl and started her sporting career as a girl. It was only after her puberty and exactly when she was breaking the first sport records when she started to look suspiciously manly. The story is fascinating, full of drama twists, love and friendship, including the great (and true) finale. But what I am most excited about - is the team behind it. I’ve worked with the writers and the director before and I know they are the most skilled, unbiased, human, empathetic creators. We’ve done the series Morning Glow together. One of the producers is Emmy Winner Vratislav Šlajer from Bionaut and Klára Follová, a colleague of mine, who was the creative producer of our best travelling show The Golden Swan. I am quite sure this will be a hit – and not only in the Czech Republic.


How do you see the role of Czech content evolving in the broader Central and Eastern European streaming landscape?

More and more significant. As I said – we are evolving quickly but steadily. We follow the data Voyo and Nova give us and every time we feel the need to surprise our audience with something they have not seen before, we also think about how not to lose the core audience we’ve gained so far. It pushes us to develop more and more sophisticated stories – and hopefully at the end of the day have great projects which resonate with the mainstream local audience and feel like personalized at the same time. The international success of the projects is a great bonus for us, we’re grateful for it.


What trends do you think will shape the future of scripted content in the Czech and CEE markets over the next few years?

Oh many. As the linear and SVOD content distribution merges: the options are open. There will be many experiments, I am sure, with gamification of projects, multidimensional screening, more and more sophisticated algorithms which will be able to deliver your own personal linear TV to you and much more. But I am quite optimistic about my field of expertise: there’s nothing more comforting and relaxing after a long day than watching the good old local quality TV.


With increasing competition from global streaming platforms, how does Voyo differentiate itself in terms of storytelling and production?

Simply – we’re local in everything we do and think about. That is what makes us market leader at home and interesting for audience abroad.


Voyo and Nova original series are also successfully travelling abroad, with CME working on their distribution with leading international distributors. Do you consider the international potential of the projects before commissioning them?

No, never. The story needs to be strong for Czechs and Slovaks. If the development and production show an international potential, it’s good, we cultivate it – but it is not the criteria according to which we decide what to commission and what not.