Dogan has some further expansion plans in Romania

After launching Kanal D Romania in February 2007, the Turkish group Dogan has some further expansion plans into Romania. According to statements by Begum Dogan, Turkish billionaire Aydin Dogan’s daughter and the top executive of Dogan in Romania, the company is planning some other investments, both in the TV field and other businesses. In a story that is to be published tomorrow by the Money Express business weekly, Begum Dogan says Dogan will further develop Kanal D, launched as a general interest TV station, and invest into some TV niches, both taken over from existing owners and newly-launched.

Kanal D was launched in February 2007 with a team of famous TV stars transferred from the leader of the commercial market, Pro TV, and the public television, and with a tabloid-entertainment schedule. The ratings achieved were below | More…

Three new niche TV stations controlled by the Voiculescu family

Intact/Antena/Jurnalul, one of the major players on the Romanian media market has plans for three or four new niche stations, according to Broadband TV News. An unofficial source confirmed for Comanescu.ro the plans are real, but, instead of the four stations mentioned by Broadband TV News (children, cooking, men, music), said there will be three niche TV’s: children, music, sports.

Intact/Antena/Jurnalul is a group founded by Dan Voiculescu, one of the richest Romanians and an ex-secret police (Securitate) informer. It includes four TV stations (Antena 1 - general, 2nd position on the market, Antena 2 - talk-shows, Antena 3 - News, Euforia Lifestyle TV - women glossy), and other important media assets, such as the 2nd more important general interest newspaper, Jurnalul, and the best sports newspaper, Gazeta sporturilor. The group is today owned mainly by Voiculescu’s daughters, Camelia and Corina. There are no foreign associates, although reports about some discussions with RTL, Permira (an investment fund) and the greeks from Antenna have surfaced.

Some other news about future projects at Voiculescu have also spread in the past, with no results so far.

Lucian Mândruţă, one of the primetime news anchors at Antena 1

Adrian Sârbu appointed as the COO of CME

Adrian Sârbu, 52, has been appointed as the new Chief Operating Officer of Central European Media Enterprises, a company owned by Estee Lauder’s inheritors and operating in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Sârbu is famous in Romania for launching, on December 1st 1995, Pro TV, the actual leader of the TV market and a revolutionary concept among the Romanian media, based on an American model. He also has developed some other TV projects, such as the very successful women station Acasa TV, and massive print and radio divisions, including a successful business newspaper, two FM stations networks, the leading press agency in Romania and several magazines.

Some allegations about uneven business practices have foreshadowed Sârbu’s career. One of them refers to friendly treatment reserved to the ex-communists in power between 2001 and 2004, in exchange for tax payments postponing. At a certain point, the tax due to the state was more than 40 million US dollars.

Sârbu is famous for his ego-oriented management and his visions transformed into reality. He very seldom appeared in the media, and has only given two interviews, at 1 year and ten years after the Pro TV launching, on his own TV station. He only owns 5% of the companies controlling the TV operations, after recently having sold two 5% stakes to CME - the last one, for 49,8 million US dollars. The ownership of most of the radio, print and internet operations is the same, but the proportions are opposite.

The radio and print operations of Sârbu/CME might become very active, due to Sârbu’s intentions to sell a big part of his participation to CME, stated by unofficial sources.

CME first six months of 2007 results: net revenues - 364.2 million US dollars, operating income - 85.8 million US dollars.

A meeting of the CME investors will begin today, in Bucharest. Some live audio broadcasts and presentation slides will be available on the site of CME, CETV-net.com, today, at 9.30 EET.

Andreea Esca, the 7 pm news anchor on Pro TV,
a face very familiar to the Romanians

The CME press release: | More…

Romanian business newspapers niche appearing

The success of ‘Ziarul financiar’, a newspaper started by one of the big Romanian media groups, MediaPro, in 1998, has been a model for ‘Business Standard’, another title launched on May 18th, this year, by another Romanian publisher, Realitatea-Caţavencu. Unofficial informations started to appear lately about a third business daily newspaper, to be launched somewhere during the first half of 2008, by Intact-Antena-Jurnalul, a group controlled by the Voiculescu family, leading the sports newspapers market (’Gazeta Sporturilor’) and holding a second position on the general newspapers market (’Jurnalul naţional’) and in terms of commercial general interest televisions (Antena 1).

The work title is ‘Profitabil’ (’Lucrative’), and the project management is provided by the team at ‘Sâptămâna financiară’, an newspaper-style business weekly published by Intact/Jurnalul.

‘Ziarul financiar’, a project inspired by ‘Financial Times’, is the first successful niche player on the Romanian | More…

The first official traffic measurements on Romanian sites

The first results of the Romanian Internet Audience Study (SATI) were published today on the Romanian ABC site, BRAT.ro. SATI was initated at the beginning of the year, as an official alternative to the data provided by Trafic.ro, and are provided by Spring Gmbh, a german company with credentials in this kind of measurements.

The September data (see link) only include the owners that were willing to pay taxes between 400 and 10000 euros for participating in the study - according to their estimated traffic. Most of the sites in the top are content (news) sites owned by big classic media groups, that are likely to offer advertising based upon official figures, according to the rules in TV or print ad sales. The highest volume independents are Clubafaceri.ro (Medianet), Neogen.ro (Neogen), Roportal.ro (Roportal SRL) and Acasa.ro (Vodanet Media), according to the unique visitors (clients) count. The highest position of a news site is taken by HotNews.ro (HotNews.ro SRL), another independent site, followed closely by several sports and tabloid sites belonging to big classic media groups.

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).

The Voiculescu group, to launch a new FM station

Antena/Intact/Jurnalul, one of the big media groups on the Romanian market, is to launch News FM during the 2nd half of October 2007. Antena/Intact already owns Romantic FM, an adult oriented radio, and is more succesful on the TV and newspapers market. While Antena 1 holds the 2nd position in the top of the commercial televisions, Gazeta Sporturilor is the leader of the sports newspapers market, and Jurnalul naţional is the 2nd most sold general interest newspaper in Romania.

News FM will broadcast on 89 MHz and will have a news profile. Some other attempts to launch news stations on the Romanian radio market didn’t end up with high ratings. The dominant type of radio is contemporary hits, quite successful at stations like Radio 21 (Lagardere) or Kiss FM (SBS).

The Antena/Intact/Jurnalul group also owns three niche TV stations and various print titles. It’s the greatest purely Romanian media group on the market, the same size with Media Pro (95% CME) and Ringier (Swiss). The managers have started various negotiations with RTL, the Antenna group (Greece) and Permira (an investment fund). There are no even sale intentions, however.

Targeted advertising offer on Comanescu.HotNews.ro

“Media lui Comanescu” launched a targeted advertising offer, beginning with October 1st, 2007. The rate card is 100 RON (roughly 30 euros)/1000 impressions. Advertising is sold via ARBOmedia.

“Media lui Comanescu” (”Comanescu’s Media”) is Iulian Comanescu’s Romanian language mass-media blog, a leader in this category in the Romanian blogosphere. Its traffic varies between 1200 and 1500 unique visitors per day. Among the readers of “Media lui Comanescu” there are journalists and managers in all the important media outlets in Romania (table with networks that access it here. Media group visits marked with red).

German investor increases its involvment on the Romanian media market

European Media Investment AG (EMI), an ARBOmedia company, is planning a strategic expansion on the Romanian market, by continuing the local newspapers takeover campaign, investing into two printing plants and a local news Internet portal. ARBOmedia/EMI is already present on the Romanian market with several local titles. Its main competitors are the Austrians from Inform Media and also the PubliMedia local network, developed by Adrian Sârbu with CME support.

ARBOmedia also owns 80% of one of the two most important internet advertising brokers.

The EMI board recently took the decision to get listed at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, according to [EN] Finanztreff.de.

ARBOmedia.ro [EN]

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…