SVOD Production in East-Central Europe: Understanding the ‘Streamer Imaginaries’ of Independent Producers

Transnational SVOD services have been redefining and, in many ways, reinforcing centre-periphery hierarchies in the global screen media industries through the uneven cross-border distribution of content and local production investment. After reaching high levels of SVOD penetration and local content investment in the mature digital markets of the ‘big five’ West European countries, whose national production has traditionally travelled relatively well across borders (Grece 2017; Higson 2018; Jones 2020), transnational streamers’ attentions have also been shifting gradually to the smaller Western European countries, such as Belgium, and most recently to the more peripheral, but fast-growing markets of East-Central Europe (Iordache et al. 2022, 315).