**3. Primeran: the project of a Basque OTT**

The project of a Basque OTT as a "Basque Netflix" was announced by EITB's director, Andoni Aldekoa, at a control commission of the Basque Parliament (the legislative branch of the Basque regional government) in May of 2021. The Basque OTT would include not only EITB's contents, but also the audiovisual productions originated in the Basque Country to promote the Basque culture and language [42]. Aldekoa said at the commission: "We don't want to enter the platform scenario to compete with the private sector. We want a platform forged by the Basque society through EITB. We have to be realistic and honest. We are not going to compete with the large-scale productions of Netflix or Amazon Prime. But we believe we have to offer that content if we want the youth, mostly the youth, to consume media contents in Basque [43]." Also in May of 2021, EITB signed an agreement with internet operator Euskaltel to offer the Euskalteka, a free catch-up catalog with 300 hours of programs, but limited to the operator's subscribers. In 2022, EITB and Amazon Prime Video reached a deal to distribute series, movies and gastronomic documentaries in this transnational platform. In September of 2023, the Spanish platform Movistar+ agreed to include almost 300 hours of EITB's contents.

EITB's OTT strategy is framed within the contracts periodically signed between the corporation and its public funder, the Basque regional government, in this case for the period of 2022 to 2025 [44]. The new OTT, named Primeran, is aligned with EITB's public service commitment to produce and provide audiovisual contents in accordance with the sociocultural and linguistic identities of its public. This OTT will be accompanied by Makusi (a children's game), a platform with content geared to young audiences.

Primeran is also part of EITB 2030 strategy, which positions the corporation as a public broadcasting group with platforms (online video services, applications), channels (television, radio, web) and windows (social media), in alliance with associations of independent film-makers in the Basque Country, and with the goal of increasing the original versions in the Basque language [35]. In 2022, EITB participated in the production of several Basque movies. The new media habits tied to the constant rise of the video on demand (VOD) in Europe are driving the corporation's OTT initiatives. In ten years, between 2010 and 2020, the VOD market in the European Union triplicated its revenues, mostly due to subscriptions, along with increased broadband penetration and digitization of content. At the end of 2020, more than 140 million European households were subscribed to these VOD services, a trend accelerated by the arrival of Netflix and Amazon Prime in 2012 [45]. In the Basque Country, seven out of every ten consumers pay for one or two streaming platforms [35]. Primeran is expected to reach out to two million visitors a year with streaming of video on demand and live streaming of radio and television through Smart TVs, mobile devices, the web, streaming devices of Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV, and HbbTV [46, 47]. The platform became available in mid-September of 2023 in primeran.eus and it can be accessed to after a free registration. Primeran has more than 3,000 available contents, mostly in the Basque language or dubbed into the Basque language, that go from movies and documentaries to sports, cuisine, music and children's programs. Some of the contents will be created exclusively for Primeran, which has its own aggregator and recommender system, among other functionalities [48].
