The national daily newspapers market (updated): 915.000 distributed copies

According to the Romanian ABC (BRAT) figures released at mid-December, the market of the Romanian daily newpapers might have slightly dropped. BRAT published only the figures of 11 titles, which decreased by 6,7 per cent, but the data about the rest of the titles, unaudited and audited, but without figures for July-September 2006, are not available yet. “Jurnalul naţional” dropped down from no. 2 (over 90.000 sold copies) to no. 4 (slightly more than 70.000).

The total market of the Romanian national newspapers raises to roughly 915.000 distributed copies, including the Compact free newspaper and sports, Hungarian language and financial titles, or 598.000 sold copies for the purely general interest newspapers. 4 of the 6 greatest circulation titles belong to Ringier România, while the other two are owned by Intact (Dan Voiculescu).

The leader of the market, Libertatea, a Ringier title, sells roughly 245.000 copies and has a market share of 27 %, including free, sports, business, hungarian, or 41 %, on the purely general interest, sold at newsstands dailies. Adevarul, a quality recently taken over by the controversial oil mogul Dinu Patriciu, went out of the top 10, but Averea, another title acquisitioned by the same, entered it.

According to their sold circulation and other characteristics, the newspapers on the Romanian market could be divided into three cathegories: sexy young-mature, mid-life crisis and agonizing dwarves. | More…

The Big 5 on the Romanian media market

The circulation figures published earlier this week by BRAT [RO] (the Romanian ABC) are relevant for the changes in the Romanian media during the last year. Nine of the 11 daily titles that presented data for July-September 2006 are controlled by Ringier Romania, Dan Voiculescu, Dinu Patriciu and Adrian Sîrbu, a situation that shows a clear sign of concentration of the media ownership in Romania in the hands of ‘Five Big’ companies. The ‘Fifth Big’ is Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, due to ‘Cotidianul’, an unaudited newspaper with some potential, and some other media assets.

Together with the distribution of ‘Compact’, Ringier Romania’s free newspaper, and also including unaudited titles or titles that haven’t presented their latest figures yet, the entire national daily newspapers market raises to around 950,000 sold/distributed copies per day, for a population of 21,6 million inhabitants. Taking into consideration this approximate, but however relevant total, Dinu Patriciu holds, with ‘Averea’ and ‘Adevărul’, a 5,2 % market share (almost 50,000 sold copies for the two newspapers). Adrian Sîrbu also has roughly 4,8 % of the market with ‘Gândul’ and ‘Ziarul financiar’, while Dan Voiculescu controls a 14,6 % share, with the 141,000 sold copies of ‘Jurnalul naţional’ and ‘Gazeta sporturilor’ sports newspaper. | More…

Circulation variations: the latest Romanian ABC results

The Romanian ABC (BRAT) posted on its site [RO] the circulation figures corresponding to 11 daily newspapers (general interest, sports, financial), for July-September 2006. According to the data, the total sold circulation of the 11 titles has decreased from 754.156 copies to 703.148, or by 6,7 %, compared to January-June 2006. The highest decrease belongs to the newspaper on the 2nd place (excepting the sports newspapers), ‘Jurnalul naţional’, whose sales went down with 23,3 %, due to the absence of massive promotions (the so-called Dacia Logan car campaigns) in the audited period. The highest increase in sold circulation, 61,9 %, belongs to ‘Averea’, recently taken over by Dinu Patriciu, a controversial Romanian oil mogul, and the former team of ‘Libertatea’, the leader of the market, that left the Ringier title several months ago.

Together with the unaudited titles and the titles subscribing to BRAT, but with no data for July-September, the whole market of the Romanian national daily newspapers raises to around 950,000 sold copies in average.

Variations of the main daily newspapers, Autumn 2006

Top Romanian manager forecast about the Romanian media market in 2007: concentration, involvement into the local market, new media

Dragos Stanca, the General Director of the Caţavencu Group (Realitatea Media), gave Comanescu.ro a forecast about the Romanian media market in 2007:
‘I believe 2007 will show a general trend of consolidation of the Romanian publishing market.

• The successful local newspapers will be taken over by big trusts, the unsuccessful ones will disappear, especially if Ringier will get back on the local market, after the unsuccessful experience with ’Ziarul de Cluj’ (1998).
• At least three companies that publish only magazines, with a turnover smaller than 5 million euros, will be acquisitioned by bigger companies. | More…

Romania’s President is seen less often on TV

Romania’s President, Traian Băsescu, appeared only 84 times on the main national Romanian TV stations during November 2006, according to the last monitoring provided by the broadcast regulating authority, the CNA. Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, Romania’s Prime Minister, has a much stronger TV presence, according to the same monitoring, with 124 appearances.

After the change of power in December 2004, the number of appearances on TV of the two politicians was roughly the same.

The TV stations taken into consideration by the CNA were: TVR 1 and TVR 2 (public), Pro TV and Antena 1 (main commercial) and Antena 3 and Realitatea TV (rolling news). The CNA also released a monitoring of the main radio stations, where the President is placed the third, after the leader of the main opposition party, Mircea Geoană (PSD).

The top of the appearances (length and number): | More…

Romanian mogul acquires four new titles

The ‘Catavencu’ print Group, belonging to the controversial Romanian mogul Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, officially stated it acquired four new titles in its portofolio. ‘Bilant’, an economic monthly, IQAds.ro, a media and advertising Internet site, ‘J’Adore’, a shopping magazine, and ‘Psihologia Azi’, a psychology monthly, will raise the total of titles in ‘Catavencu’ to 14.

‘Catavencu’ was taken over by Vîntu in may, 2006. The transaction is part of the so-called oligarchs assault on the media market. Dinu Patriciu, another controversial billionare, also started to build a media empire earlier this year, while Dan Voiculescu and Adrian Sîrbu, the other two big media owners, have also been active on the market lately.

• Romanian oligarchs slow down their assault of the media market [EN, Comanescu.ro]

Free Romanian newspaper: successful, preparing for a local market assault

‘Compact’, the free newspaper launched by Ringier Romania at the beginning of May, 2006, is preparing two local editions, ‘Compact de Cluj’ and ‘Compact de Timis’ - says [RO] the editor in chief of ‘Gazeta Sporturilor’, Catalin Tolontan, on his popular football & media blog, Tolo.ro. In case the news is true, Compact might meet at Timisoara a competitor called ‘Timis Expres’, published by Informmedia, an Austrian publishing company.

‘Compact’ is the first free newspaper launched in Romania. It distributed 147,500 copies in average in its first two months after launch, according to the first figures available at BRAT.ro (the Romanian ABC).

• The ‘Compact’ Internet site [RO], including the blog [EN-RO] about Bucharest of Marco Stettler, the newspaper’s Swiss publisher.

The Romanian media about the Romanian media

Romanian newspapers report quite a lot on themselves and other types of media, reveals a study by The Center of Independent Journalism (CJI - RO) and Media Monitoring Agency (AMP - RO). One of the explanations resides in the various connections between the mass media domain and some other wide-interest topics:

• the former secret police: some journalists were revealed as ex-delators for the Securitate
• the Romanian oligarchs taking over or launching various titles/televisions, supposedly to protect themselves from the anti-corruption campaign of the Justice and Truth government alliance; media property transfer in general
• secret services agents infiltrated among journalists, possibly with unethical/non-democratic goals
• political biasing of the media
• assaulted journalists.

The study doesn’t include a comparison with an earlier stage of the Romanian society, such as the former social-democrat (PSD) mandate. However, most of the topics above appeared massively in the Romanian newspapers after the change of political power, when the political pressure decreased significantly.

Top of the national newspapers, according to the number of stories published on mass media topics, September, 2006: | More…

The Beatles again: Within you, without you / Tomorrow Never Knows

What is interesting, in addition to the video itself:

• promotes the new ‘Love’ remixes The Beatles album. The video was posted by ‘TheBeatlesOfficial [EN]‘ on YouTube and the link was promoted with the official TheBeatles.com [EN] newsletter
• the video is heavily reminiscent of the WMP/Winamp/iTunes visualisations.

Good local PR agencies for sale, says manager of PR dept. in important agency

2007 might be the year when the top Romanian PR agencies will become interesting for the global advertising agencies, suggested Eliza Rogalski, the manager of the PR department of Tempo Advertising, during an ymterviu [RO] (interview by Yahoo Messenger) given to this autor on Blog.HotNews.ro. ‘I believe we might assist to the first takeover of a local PR agency in 2007,’ Rogalski told Blog.HotNews.ro. ‘I can’t tell for sure, but I suppose it will be one of the top-3 agencies.’

Virtually all the agencies specialized in public relations in Romania are still owned by their Romanian creators and some of them have declared turnovers in the six-figures area for 2005 or 2006. By contrast, most of the Romanian full-service advertising outlets have been taken over by multinationals such as Ogilvy, BBDO or McCann at the end of the nineties or beginning of the present decade. Rogalski’s agency, Tempo Advertising, is an exception to the rule, the only big independent on the market, owned and run by Dragos Grigoriu. 2005 and 2006 have been two successful years for the PR department of Tempo Advertising, especially due to crisis campaigns done for Tamiflu (avian influenza), Agricola and Romanian billionaires such as Ion Tiriac.

Eliza Rogalski is also a contributor [EN] for Comanescu.ro.