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.

The most massive player on the market is Ringier Romania, which owns a share of 56,2 %, counting the free copies of ‘Compact’ and the sold circulation of the ‘Pro sport’ sports newspaper (roughly 534,000 copies per day).

The market shares of Ringier Romania, Voiculescu, Sîrbu and Patriciu raise up to 80 % of the total distributed circulation on the Romanian daily newspapers market. Vintu might also have a share of 3-5 % of the rest

One year ago, ‘Compact’ was not launched, Dinu Patriciu was owning nothing and Adrian Sîrbu was controlling only ‘Ziarul financiar’. In other words, Ringier was holding three out of ten existing titles, Voiculescu, two, Sîrbu, one.

The ‘Big 4’ presented above also control important assets on other media markets (television, radio, Internet), e.g. the first and the second commercial televisions in the cases of Sîrbu and Voiculescu. A ‘Fifth Big’ on the Romanian market is Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, the owner of the yet unaudited ‘Cotidianul’. According to ‘industry rumors’ (the expression belongs to Dragoş Stanca, Vîntu’s general director for print media), the Romanian oligarch also controls ‘Ziua’, which entitles him to a market share of 3-5 % in daily national. Vîntu also owns, among others, the first rolling news TV station in Romania, a business television and has some plans to relaunch ‘Romantica’, a soap operas channel.

As I said somewhere else, such a concentration of the media ownership might have positive effects in terms of strategy, marketing budgets, synergy etc., but also raises some concerns due to the HR instability the market was thrown into. Last but not least, the concerns refer to the unproven ‘hidden intentions’ of the so-called ‘Romanian oligarchs’, which are exposed from the judicial point of view in the present frame of the anti-corruption campaign of the governing ‘Justice and Truth’ center-right Alliance. No matter which is the truth, the map of the Romanian press in the Autumn of 2006 has little in common with the one at the end of 2005.

• Originally published [RO] in ‘Evenimentul zilei’.

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1. [...] The Romanian media market is divided into five big media holdings that include significant televisions and daily newspapers: Ringier, Voiculescu (Intact-Antena), Sîrbu (MediaPro), Patriciu (Adevărul), Vîntu (Realitatea Media-Caţavencu). See ‘The 5 Big on the romanian media market’ [EN, Comanescu.ro] for explanations. [...]

   Pingback by Romanian Media Explained » The national daily newspapers market (updated): 915.000 distributed copies — December 25, 2006 #

2. This is so useful and well presented. Do you know of similar sites for different countries?
   Thank you for all your help

   Comment by pippa — February 2, 2007 #

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