Tabloids are prosperous

During 2007, the uncontested leader of the newspaper market in Romania, Libertatea (Ringier România), started to be seriously challenged by two other titles, Click! (Adevărul Holding - Patriciu) and Can-Can (independent, taken over by Adrian Sârbu according to some unofficial information). According to the Romanian ABC (Biroul Român de Audit al Tirajelor - BRAT.ro), the market is as described in the following chart (sold circulation taken into account, data missing where the value is 0):

Libertatea is the traditional leader of the newspapers market in Romania and keeps its position, in spite of an important circulation decrease during the fall-winter of 2007. It sells more than twice than the next title in the hierarchy, Jurnalul naţional, whose position is now threatened by Click!. Having a formula close to the Swiss Blick (ported also on some other Eastern Europe markets), the leader is published by Ringier România, the strongest print group on the market. During the autumn of 2006, the executive director of the Ringier division in charge of Libertatea, Răzvan Corneţeanu, has left Ringier in order to build Adevărul Holding for Dinu Patriciu, the richest Romanian according to the Forbes-like Capital Top 300, partly due to the 3,75 billion euros sale of Rompetrol to KazMunai Gaz. Most of the Libertatea team followed Corneţeanu, to do Click!, a title similar to Libertatea which went up to more than 90,000 sold copies in November-December 2007.

Can-Can, the third title, is a tabloid closer to the yellow formula. Rumors about its takeover by another strong Romanian publisher, Adrian Sârbu, have spread during 2007.

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment