News aggregator vs. traditional content producer

The topic of my presentation for the “Innovation in media” conference that took place yesterday, at Howard Johnson, has been “Traditional content producer vs. news aggregator”. Some kind of opposition is perceived usually between the two categories, but I’m trying to prove the opposition is rather historical. Books like The Bible were aggregating content since the dawn of time, while some non-aggregating concepts are yet successful on the Internet even in 2007.

Aggregators are more and more necessary with the increase of the amount of information available to the modern consumer. They may target wide or niche audiences, while rss readers are personal, “egocast” solutions.

Copyright issues cannot regard information itself, since information is free, so restrictions can be imposed by traditional content producers only in terms of the form of their material or in types of content other than information: opinion texts, image.

Traditional content producer vs. news aggregator (en, pdf - right click to download).

Investment frenzy came to a halt on the Romanian media market

During the last two years, the Romanian media market has been prone to an investment frenzy, especially from the part of some very rich and controversial Romanian businessmen, who got a position on the major media groups list by their moves. However, it seems to have come to a halt.

Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, one of the richest Romanians, has cancelled his plans for two new niche televisions, ‘Picanto’ (cooking channel) and ‘Wedding TV’ (a franchise of the British namesake). The move might have been due to the fact that his recently re-launched Romantica, a women channel, has rather small audience figures, and Realitatea TV, Vîntu’s leading rolling news niche television, is losing its advance to Antena 3, its main competitor on the segment.

In spite of giving in 75% of the huge oil Rompetrol conglomerate to KazMunaiGaz, a kazah state company, for 2,7 billion dollars, Dinu Patriciu doesn’t have any spectacular investment plans for his newly-acquired media group. In spite of becoming the richest Romanian, the businessman stated to the Romanian business weekly ‘Money Express’ he would focus on ‘building a competent management’ for his media business, a process which he says he has already started successfully. | More…

Inventory of the Romanian TV niches: an obvious increase

Launches of Antena 2, Kanal D and Romantica indicate that on the Romanian TV market interesting events keep happening in terms of niche. The channels established in 2007, but also in the past recent years, indicate a diversification of the TV offer. The broadcast niches in Romania are not yet profitable but they have started to gain more and more viewers. A number of stations belonging in general to the big media owners in Romania have started to appear out of the blue.

Romanian TV niches

The “n.a.” results in the table above, compiled by Antena 1 from official data provided by TNS-AGB, most of the time show the absence of the television in April 2006. | More…

Romanian Daily Newspapers Market, 2006 versus 2005: a fall of 7 %

The daily newspaper market in 2006 changed compared to 2005. The launch of a free of charge daily newspaper, and the dramatic changes to the editorial team and owner gave the daily printed press a brand new form. Drawing an inference and calculating, this means a total circulation lower by 7 percentages. This fall foresees a rearrangement of the reference segment.

The seven percentages refer to the average number of the sold circulations per day for the nationally distributed daily newspapers. The information recently disclosed by the Romanian Circulation Audit Office (BRAT) shows that the number of the sold copies fell by 57,901 copies, from an average of 820,190 in 2005 to 762,289 in 2006. | More…

Campaigns of the millennium: Who invested and who acquired profit out of the big media promotions in Romania?

By their promotions, the media companies are trying to gain loyal target and broaden it. Similar to other industries, such strategy entails the public, but it also encumbers a range of disadvantages. Among such weak points it’s worth mentioning the costs, as well as the fact that the targeted public could be guided to a false direction by the value added by a promotion, depending on its object, prizes in cash or other benefits. Such benefits run the risk on putting into a secondary position the very thing the media is selling, the very content of the newspaper or television.
When conceiving a strategy, selecting marketing professionals is a difficult task. We are talking about an investment into prizes or objects for an additional value, as the CDs, books or cosmetics, with an uncertain result. Certainly, the circulation increases during promotion, and decreases later on. There are a lot of factors to be taken into consideration, but two of them are critical. First of all, if the investment into promotion is compensated by the circulation increase or, at least, in case the loss is acceptable and undertaken. Secondly, when the promotion ends, the circulation is above the one prior to the campaign, meaning that the publication gained a larger number of readers. | More…

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…

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.