MediaHub’s Kerim Emrah Turna: Diversity Has Always Been Core to Who We Are
Kerim Emrah Turna, Founder and CEO of MediaHub, is looking forward to a dynamic MIPCOM market as the global entertainment industry is changing and evolving fast with his company analyzing and trying to identify the new trends and best business models to produce, distirbute and monetize content – from multi-episode drama series to IP rights, and the latest hype – microdramas.
Kerim, MediaHub has evolved from a distribution-focused company into a business covering acquisitions, production, co-production and rights management. What is the next stage of that evolution, and where do you see the biggest growth opportunity for the company over the next two to three years?
MediaHub is a very young company on paper, but it’s built on top of twenty plus years of accumulated industry experience — so, on several fronts we started from a position of advantage rather than from scratch. We touch every area this question raises — acquisitions, production, co-production, rights management — we think of ourselves as an independent distributor. That independence is what lets us reshape ourselves quickly, which is probably our defining trait in a media industry currently going through very difficult times.
The next two to three years will be about making the right calls and showing the right governance, because the sector is genuinely at an inflection point. Some things continue as before, but free-to-air is changing fast, classic pay TV is under real pressure, and on the SVOD side only a small handful of giants are making money — some only now turning profitable — while studios are struggling. For a company our size, this is exactly the moment to make smart, disciplined decisions rather than chase every opportunity.
At last year’s MIPCOM, you presented Bitter Justice as a major new original and said the goal was to develop one new project every year. How has that strategy progressed since then, and what can you reveal about the next originals currently in development?
The strategy is very much alive, though its shape has evolved year by year. We started with Alaca, then continued with Bitter Justice as our first true international co-production. This year we’ve taken a somewhat different path: we’ve made intellectual-property investments in two new drama titles. We’ll be launching both at MIPCOM this year, the underlying strategy hasn’t changed at all: we remain committed to bringing our own originals to buyers worldwide, we’re simply diversifying the ways we get there.
Alaca has continued to expand internationally, while Bitter Justice has opened another chapter for MediaHub as a producer. What have you learned from taking your own IP to international buyers that has changed the way you develop projects today?
Honestly, it’s been a continuous learning process. We listen closely to our buyers, gather their feedback, and try to genuinely understand their needs, and that shapes how we build new content from the ground up. It informs everything from which audiences we prioritize, to the tone of the stories we tell, to the themes we choose to explore.
MediaHub and Globalsphere are increasingly working with international partners, including the co-production with India’s Shemaroo Entertainment. Are you now actively looking for more co-production partners outside Turkey, and which territories are currently the most attractive for these partnerships?
Yes, absolutely — and this is an ongoing search rather than a one-off effort. Since we’re always working on new productions, we’re constantly looking for valuable co-production partners, whether they’re based in Turkey or elsewhere, and they can genuinely come from anywhere in the world. What matters most to us is finding a partner who brings real market knowledge and distribution strength to the table, wherever they happen to be based.
Turkish drama remains extremely competitive internationally, with a growing number of distributors fighting for the same buyers. How do you differentiate MediaHub’s catalog today, and what makes a title compelling enough for you to acquire or invest in it?
The first thing I’d say is that we’re not only a distributor licensing Turkish drama. We’re a globally operating distribution company, reaching buyers and clients in every part of the world, and to serve them properly we carry catalogs sourced from across the globe. That said, given our own origin, Turkish content naturally still occupies a very important place in our catalog, and a large part of that is our own original IP. What sets those titles apart, we believe, is that they speak to a particular sociology in a way that genuinely resonates and creates real differentiation for us in the market. Beyond that, drama is where the large majority of our focus sits overall, because that’s where we’ve built the deepest expertise — and what makes a title compelling to us hasn’t changed: a genuinely universal theme, carried by strong, character-driven writing and production values that hold up in any market.
You have previously identified Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Southern Europe as areas with significant potential. Which of these markets has developed most strongly for MediaHub over the past year, and where do you expect the next major breakthrough to come from?
It’s fair to say progress across these regions has been mixed. Progress across these markets has been mixed this past year. Some regions remain valuable long-term despite near-term financial pressures, others are still building without a clear breakthrough yet, and one region has quietly become one of the most valuable for us — that’s probably where I’d point to real, tangible progress.
MediaHub has been expanding beyond Turkish drama, adding European limited series, documentaries and unscripted titles to its portfolio. How important will diversification by genre and country of origin become to your international sales strategy?
We’ve defined and positioned ourselves as a global content distributor from day one, so having content from across the world, and content that speaks to different audience groups, has always mattered enormously to us. That’s translated into a genuinely wide range of partnerships over the years — we’ve worked with partners across Western and Eastern Europe, from the Netherlands to Greece, as well as in the United States, Argentina, the Philippines, the Middle East, and several markets in the Far East including Korea. That diversity has always been core to who we are.
The company has also been exploring microdramas and shorter-form storytelling as a complement to traditional long-form series. Have you identified a viable business model for these formats yet, and do you see them becoming a meaningful part of MediaHub’s catalog?
We’ve followed the microdrama space closely since it first emerged, trying to analyze how it’s growing and where it’s likely to head. Right now, it’s genuinely become a large business in markets like China and the US, but for it to grow meaningfully beyond that, it needs different ingredients. My own view is that if it takes off in Western Europe next, that’s when it truly goes global — and that’s a conversation I don’t hear enough people having. What I’d flag is that the number of companies actually making money from it, sustainably, is still quite small, so we’re watching closely. It’s worth remembering FAST was positioned as the “next big thing” before this — and it did spread significantly and continues to — but it never turned into a business at the scale of free-to-air, pay TV, or AVOD/SVOD.
With streaming platforms increasingly commissioning originals while broadcasters remain highly price-sensitive, what are buyers asking for at MIPCOM 2026 that is noticeably different from what they were looking for two or three years ago? And how has that changed the way MediaHub packages and sells content?
The timing is genuinely difficult right now — global economic and political pressures have converged at the same moment, and the media is feeling that. At the same time, there’s more choice than ever; the number of options in the market has multiplied. On the broadcast side, buyers, especially in emerging markets, have become far more cost-conscious than they were two or three years ago. On the streaming side, several regional players are still in the process of launching or expanding, and they’ve realized that local content is essential if they want to actually convert and retain subscribers. We’re also deeply engaged with streaming platforms ourselves across many different regions, working with both global and local operators on a variety of deals, and from time to time we’re able to announce some of those publicly. I expect the broader trend, streamers leaning harder into local content to win subscribers, to keep going.
MediaHub is a very young company on paper, but it’s built on top of twenty plus years of accumulated industry experience — so, on several fronts we started from a position of advantage rather than from scratch. We touch every area this question raises — acquisitions, production, co-production, rights management — we think of ourselves as an independent distributor. That independence is what lets us reshape ourselves quickly, which is probably our defining trait in a media industry currently going through very difficult times.
The next two to three years will be about making the right calls and showing the right governance, because the sector is genuinely at an inflection point. Some things continue as before, but free-to-air is changing fast, classic pay TV is under real pressure, and on the SVOD side only a small handful of giants are making money — some only now turning profitable — while studios are struggling. For a company our size, this is exactly the moment to make smart, disciplined decisions rather than chase every opportunity.
At last year’s MIPCOM, you presented Bitter Justice as a major new original and said the goal was to develop one new project every year. How has that strategy progressed since then, and what can you reveal about the next originals currently in development?
The strategy is very much alive, though its shape has evolved year by year. We started with Alaca, then continued with Bitter Justice as our first true international co-production. This year we’ve taken a somewhat different path: we’ve made intellectual-property investments in two new drama titles. We’ll be launching both at MIPCOM this year, the underlying strategy hasn’t changed at all: we remain committed to bringing our own originals to buyers worldwide, we’re simply diversifying the ways we get there.
Alaca has continued to expand internationally, while Bitter Justice has opened another chapter for MediaHub as a producer. What have you learned from taking your own IP to international buyers that has changed the way you develop projects today?
Honestly, it’s been a continuous learning process. We listen closely to our buyers, gather their feedback, and try to genuinely understand their needs, and that shapes how we build new content from the ground up. It informs everything from which audiences we prioritize, to the tone of the stories we tell, to the themes we choose to explore.
MediaHub and Globalsphere are increasingly working with international partners, including the co-production with India’s Shemaroo Entertainment. Are you now actively looking for more co-production partners outside Turkey, and which territories are currently the most attractive for these partnerships?
Yes, absolutely — and this is an ongoing search rather than a one-off effort. Since we’re always working on new productions, we’re constantly looking for valuable co-production partners, whether they’re based in Turkey or elsewhere, and they can genuinely come from anywhere in the world. What matters most to us is finding a partner who brings real market knowledge and distribution strength to the table, wherever they happen to be based.
Turkish drama remains extremely competitive internationally, with a growing number of distributors fighting for the same buyers. How do you differentiate MediaHub’s catalog today, and what makes a title compelling enough for you to acquire or invest in it?
The first thing I’d say is that we’re not only a distributor licensing Turkish drama. We’re a globally operating distribution company, reaching buyers and clients in every part of the world, and to serve them properly we carry catalogs sourced from across the globe. That said, given our own origin, Turkish content naturally still occupies a very important place in our catalog, and a large part of that is our own original IP. What sets those titles apart, we believe, is that they speak to a particular sociology in a way that genuinely resonates and creates real differentiation for us in the market. Beyond that, drama is where the large majority of our focus sits overall, because that’s where we’ve built the deepest expertise — and what makes a title compelling to us hasn’t changed: a genuinely universal theme, carried by strong, character-driven writing and production values that hold up in any market.
You have previously identified Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Southern Europe as areas with significant potential. Which of these markets has developed most strongly for MediaHub over the past year, and where do you expect the next major breakthrough to come from?
It’s fair to say progress across these regions has been mixed. Progress across these markets has been mixed this past year. Some regions remain valuable long-term despite near-term financial pressures, others are still building without a clear breakthrough yet, and one region has quietly become one of the most valuable for us — that’s probably where I’d point to real, tangible progress.
MediaHub has been expanding beyond Turkish drama, adding European limited series, documentaries and unscripted titles to its portfolio. How important will diversification by genre and country of origin become to your international sales strategy?
We’ve defined and positioned ourselves as a global content distributor from day one, so having content from across the world, and content that speaks to different audience groups, has always mattered enormously to us. That’s translated into a genuinely wide range of partnerships over the years — we’ve worked with partners across Western and Eastern Europe, from the Netherlands to Greece, as well as in the United States, Argentina, the Philippines, the Middle East, and several markets in the Far East including Korea. That diversity has always been core to who we are.
The company has also been exploring microdramas and shorter-form storytelling as a complement to traditional long-form series. Have you identified a viable business model for these formats yet, and do you see them becoming a meaningful part of MediaHub’s catalog?
We’ve followed the microdrama space closely since it first emerged, trying to analyze how it’s growing and where it’s likely to head. Right now, it’s genuinely become a large business in markets like China and the US, but for it to grow meaningfully beyond that, it needs different ingredients. My own view is that if it takes off in Western Europe next, that’s when it truly goes global — and that’s a conversation I don’t hear enough people having. What I’d flag is that the number of companies actually making money from it, sustainably, is still quite small, so we’re watching closely. It’s worth remembering FAST was positioned as the “next big thing” before this — and it did spread significantly and continues to — but it never turned into a business at the scale of free-to-air, pay TV, or AVOD/SVOD.
With streaming platforms increasingly commissioning originals while broadcasters remain highly price-sensitive, what are buyers asking for at MIPCOM 2026 that is noticeably different from what they were looking for two or three years ago? And how has that changed the way MediaHub packages and sells content?
The timing is genuinely difficult right now — global economic and political pressures have converged at the same moment, and the media is feeling that. At the same time, there’s more choice than ever; the number of options in the market has multiplied. On the broadcast side, buyers, especially in emerging markets, have become far more cost-conscious than they were two or three years ago. On the streaming side, several regional players are still in the process of launching or expanding, and they’ve realized that local content is essential if they want to actually convert and retain subscribers. We’re also deeply engaged with streaming platforms ourselves across many different regions, working with both global and local operators on a variety of deals, and from time to time we’re able to announce some of those publicly. I expect the broader trend, streamers leaning harder into local content to win subscribers, to keep going.
