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…

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.

Two Romanian video sharing sites successfully launched in 2007

Trilulilu.ro and Video.Neogen.ro quickly attracted a considerable traffic after their launch in January and April 2007. The former is an independent site launched by several small IT&C companies from Cluj, and managed by Sergiu Biriş, and lately overcame 160,000 unique visitors/week, according to Trafic.ro. The latter is a part of Neogen, the most successful community in Romania. Sources from Neogen state Video.Neogen.ro makes, together with Club.Neogen.ro, Audio.Neogen.ro and Foto.Neogen.ro, around 350,000 unique visitors/week.

The most popular clips on Trilulilu.ro have over 110,000 views, while Video.Neogen.ro, launched several months later, records a number slightly bigger than 52,000 visits. Both sites have a policy more liberal than YouTube in terms of adult content, and include disclaimers for the clips included in this category.

According to Sergiu Biriş, Trilulilu’s general manager, Neogen made an offer to buy his company after the January launch, but | 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…