Romanian oligarchs slow down their assault of the media market

According to the latest unofficial informations, ‘Adevărul’, a title recently taken over by the controversial Romanian oil mogul Dinu Patriciu, desisted its plans for a local editions expansion. The management of the new press holding also announced several weeks ago, at a meeting with the ‘Adevarul’ team, that Patriciu’s plans for a television would be put on hold.

It all could be interpreted as bad news for the market, but actually the opposite is true. Finally, one of the Romanian oligarchs started to resize his strategy according to the HR available on the market and to some coherent development plans, possibly due to the appointment of a professional print media manager as a GM of his holding, in the person of Razvan Corneţeanu, former executive director of the most important division at the successful Ringier Romania.

Patriciu’s strategy rethinking might be followed by Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, the other big and controversial new investor on the market. Voiculescu and Sîrbu, the two other Romanian media moguls, might also slow down some of their very brisk and schematic development plans. And Ringier Romania, the ‘5th Big’ in Romanian media, might lose less of its employees in the future. | More…

Top Romanian Brands

Dacia, Romania’s national car, is the top brand in Romania, according to a study published by the BusinessWeek magazine. Dacia was recently taken over by Renault and manufactures the Logan, an inexpensive car quite successful in Europe due to the 6-7000 euros price.

1. Dacia (car, taken over by Renault) - 387,4 mil euros
2. BCR (taken over by Erste) - 355,6 mil euros
3. BRD (Societe Generale) - GSG 208 mil euros
4. Petrom (oil) - 86 mil euros
5. Sensiblu (pharma) - 82 mil euros
6. Rompetrol (oil) - 72 mil. euros
7. Cristim (food) - 62 mil. euros
8. Asirom (insurance) - 60 mil. euros
9. Altex (household appliances) - 59 mil. euros
10. Domo (household appliances) - 41 mil. euros.

Romanian wunderkind

Cleopatra Stratan, the daughter of Moldovan musician Pavel Stratan, became a hit in Romania. She sold 150.000 copies of a record including songs composed by her father.

Romanian media mogul continues expansion on the Internet

Adrian Sîrbu’s Internet company, Media Pro Interactiv, launched on Monday Omsaracombogat.ro [RO], the site of a Romanian sitcom broadcast on Sîrbu’s TV station, Pro TV. Omsaracombogat.ro is the fifth spinoff of a Sîrbu television show launched since the beginning of the autumn.

The site includes some picures, news, a making of section, a blog and a “Downloads” section, where some pictures can be found. | More…

The national daily newspapers market: 950.000 distributed copies

The total market of the Romanian national newspapers raises to roughly 950.000 copies, according to the latest figures from the Romanian ABC (BRAT). 4 of the 6 greatest circulation newspapers 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 270.000 copies and has a market share of 28 %, including free, sports, business, hungarian, or 43 %, on the purely general interest, sold at newsstands dailies. This more restricted market raises to 631.632 copies.

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…

Coca-Cola Ad

What I like: the ‘mise en abime’ proceeding (gathering of people, guy giving a signal with the whistle, shadow of chopper). Imagine the ad without it - would have been hollow. Has a self-referential component, inducing ‘we do sumptuous ads’ into the watcher’s mind.

Romanian radio stations market shares

The public national radio stays the most popular in Romania, according to the latest Association for Radio Audience (ARA) figures, resulted from the autumn research (Sept. 4-Oct. 29, 2006). Radio 21 (Lagardere) takes the lead on the Bucharest market, while Europa FM (Lagardere), Kiss FM (SBS) and Pro FM (Sîrbu-MediaPro) are strong players on all the markets. The national market shares pie:

Bucharest and Urban shares; stations ownership: | More…

The price of ‘Averea’

‘Averea’, a daily newspaper, was taken over by the Romanian oil mogul Dinu Patriciu for 560,000 euros, reveals the Romanian news agency NewsIn, quoted by Jurnalismonline.ro [RO]. The price covers the value of a small newspaper, with sales in the 20,000 copies area, while the top 3 Romanian newspapers sell roughly 250,000 copies (Libertatea), 90,000 copies (Jurnalul national) and 70,000 copies (Evenimentul zilei). | More…

Romania, the virtual Kazahstan

Without knowing what they were getting into, the peasants in the Romanian village Glod became actors not in Borat – the movie, but in some kind of planetary snowball that is mixing the reality of newspaper headlines with the fiction of the movie, which in its turn was extracted from another reality. However, their argument that they didn’t know in what their images would be used for is not valid. How innocent one can be to accept one or two thousand Romanian old leu (ROL, roughly 3-5 euros) to take your pig inside your home, put a sword in the hand of a child or, in general, to take part into all the circus that can be seen in the movie? Pretending one didn’t know what he or she was doing is, under the circumstances, hypocrisy. | More…