Human resources crisis on the Romanian media market

Money can’t buy you happiness for sure on the Romanian media market. Three of the richest and most controversial Romanians, Dinu Patriciu, Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu and Dan Voiculescu, launched or disclosed plans for launching new titles on the print media market, TV stations or Internet sites this year. Their plans brought the market on the fringe of a human resources crisis.

Latest buzz: Patriciu went to Vîntu and Voiculescu to propose a mutual agreement, in order to avoid reciprocal HR damage…

Until Patriciu and Vîntu’s strong involvement, the media market was divided among three major players: Ringier Romania, a print company holding almost 50 per cent of the market with its 13 titles, and Media Pro and Antena-Intact. Belonging to controversial media visionary Adrian Sîrbu and billionaire Dan Voiculescu, an ex-secret police delator, the last two holdings include the most successful commercial TV stations (Antena 1 and Pro TV) and some good newspapers such as ‘Jurnalul national’, ‘Gazeta sporturilor’ or ‘Ziarul financiar’.

While Vîntu took over the ‘Academia Caţavencu’ trust, a structure including more than ten titles, and launched ‘The Money Channel’, a niche channel, Patriciu bought ‘Adevarul’, a quality newspaper going down, and ‘Averea’, a financial newspaper turned into a taboid earlier this year.

Journalists from both Ringier (Libertatea’) and Media Pro (print division PubliMedia, ‘Business Magazin’) left in columns to Patriciu or Vîntu, and it might only be the beginning of a series of spectacular collective moves. The moves will weaken the already not-so-good existing titles, to provide an incomplete skeleton for some new editorial teams. Still, the number of good journalists is limited on the Romanian market, as everywhere, and the overall result might be the appearance of more titles with lower circulation/audience figures.

The latest market buzz seems credible in this context. A top management source told Comanescu.ro that Dinu Patriciu contacted both Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu and Dan Voiculescu for a non-aggression pact regarding employees. Patriciu and Vîntu both agreed formally. However, further transfers from Patriciu’s structure to Vîntu are likely to happen in the near future.

1 Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

1. [...] All the titles outside the Top 3 will go through big difficulties, due to the battle for journalists that is currently fought on the Romanian media market. Probably, we won’t see any spectacular transformation at any of the six titles above earlier than in six months or one year. [...]

   Pingback by Romanian Media Explained » Six titles with problems — November 27, 2006 #

Leave a comment