Media event in Bucharest

On October 11th, at the Howard Johnson Hotel, a conference called ‘Newspapers and new media in dialogue with the future’ is to take place, organized by Freedom House and the Media Management Institute. Among the speakers there are Cristian Tudor Popescu, president of the Romanian Press Club, John Chisholm, a strategy advisor of WAN, well-known managers in the Romanian media. Iulian Comanescu will also have a presentation called ‘The news aggregators and the traditional content producers’.

Details [EN] on the conference site.

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…

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…