first romanian investment in regional media

Press agency Mediafax was launched this week on the Czech media market, in a 1,5 million-euro investment of MediaPro Management. The company hired 120  people, including reporters, editors, press photographers and graphic designers and a network of correspondents in 24 cities. Mediafax is the news biggest provider and market leader in Romania [launched 1991] and it was first step of MediaPro media empire developed by Adrian Sarbu.

executive director of Czech Mediafax is Mihai Predescu [ex editor in chief and producer of Pro TV now CME] and editor in chief is Martin Švehlák who worked also as

Aegis launches Vizeum in Romania with acquisition of local media company

Marketing communications group Aegis announces that it acquired Tempo Media in Romania and waiting local regulatory approval. Tempo Media was originally established as the media division of the Romanian full service agency Tempo Advertising, one of the leading independent full service advertising agencies, controlled by Dragos Grigoriu. Tempo Media has gross assets of €1.3m and in its portfolio has a mix of international clients such as URBB [Tuborg, Carlsberg, Skol, Orangina, Granini], Cetelem [BNP Paribas], Boom DTH and local such Alka, Nutline, Baneasa Investments and Kiwi Finance. Tempo Media will be integrated into Aegis Media, rebranding as Vizeum. Aegis is also present in Romania with another media agency Carat and research company, Synovate. Acording to

A second daily free sheet in Bucharest

RING is from monday on the market and is distributed in 50,000 copies in Bucharest [capital of Romania], through a street delivery network and waiting entrance of the subways. The newspaper has 16 pages full-color, compact format [290 x 400 mm]. It has a classic structure of a moderate tabloid: events, politics, social, services, show-biz, magazine, sports and special news. Sports and show-biz sections are the most substantial. Ring is edited by Confort Media SRL a company owned by two young romanian antreprenors and brothers [Robert and Ionut Negoita] with expertize in real estate business, hospitality [few hotels] and commercial operations [carpet retail] and this is their project to enter in the media business.

Ring’s editor in chief is Alexandru David, an ex editor of gossip weekly VIP, and he is running a team of 40 people: 28 on the editorial sector and 12 on the non-editorial activities. Advertising sales information is not yet known. On the web, the newspaper’s domain is supposed to be ziarulring.ro. The investment in the media segment is was announced by owners at around 10 million euros in 2 years, and this move is first

EUR 35 million for Champions League TV rights in Romania

The Romanian Public Television has won the auction for the rights of transmitting in Romania the first option of the Champions League [tuesday & wednesday] football games exclusively and also the summery of all the football games. TVR will, as well, transmit the semifinals and the final. The public television pays EUR 35 million for a period of three years, including the seasons 2009-2010, 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 and  the winner was announced on Monday 31st March, by TEAMM, UEFA’s representative.

The Romanian Public Televison owns the rights of Europe’s Supercup, a competition between the winner of Champions League and the winner of UEFA Cup. DTH Boom TV won the second option, having the rights of transmitting the games that are not included in TVR’s platform, the replays and the summaries of the football games. TVR is re-engaged in the transmitting of Champions League after 9 years (1992-1999), during which Pro TV [CME] has transmitted the games.

The public television owns the rights of transmitting some important sport competitions at

85 millions euro for broadcasting rights of romanian First League matches

Consortium of romanian broadcaster Intact and communications company RCS RDS will pay 85 millions euro [+ VAT 19%] for the next tree years broadcasting rights of Romania’s First League football matches [seasons 2008/2009, 2009/2010, 2010-2011], in a public auction organized Monday by Football League Association [Liga Profesionista de Fotbal / LPF]

Final price: 85 millions euro + VAT [102 millions] >> 28,3 millions euro per season +TVA
Starting price: 54 millions euro+ TVA [64,2 millions] >> 18 millions euro per season +TVA
Variation: + 57% from starting price.

Intact, which controls commercial TV channel Antena 1, received a license for a sports channel earlier this year [Arenna TV] and RCS-RDS has a DTH platform [Digi TV] with 600,000 subscribers. Intact [Antena 1] won in front of

Chief editor of Ringier romanian “Evenimentul Zilei” resigned

Razvan Ionescu, editor-in-chief of one of the most important quality daily romanian newspapers “Evenimentul Zilei” resigned yesterday. He sent an e-mail to Ringier’s management in which he accused the fact that the management wasn’t enough involved in sustained the newspaper in the last years. He is leaving current position after more than 3 years and in his mandate EVZ was transformed in best designed Romanian newspaper but it lost premier position in quality segment on behalf of Jurnalul National [edited by romanian Intact Group owned by Voiculescu Family].  This leaving is one of last mouvements in Ringier Romanian division of reference newspapers [daily Evenimentul Zilei and business weekly Capital] after Iulia Dinu [head of Division] and Cristi Mihalache [head of advertising sales]. In Romania Ringier is most important publisher with tabloid Libertatea [leader of the market], quality Evenimentul and weekly Capital and also a division of magazines.

See below some fragments of Ionescu’s leaving email:
“I have presented Ringier’s management my resignation from the editor in chief position of Evz. I have informed Marius Hagger, the new general director of Ringier Romania. I truly regret that I have chosen this way of announcing you that in a short period of time I will be leaving Evz. All I have to say is that it has been a difficult decision to make.

I’m leaving Evz because this newspaper hasn’t evolved, commercially speaking, in the past years.  The distribution, marketing and sales strategies of this newspaper have never been accomplished

cinema city: aggressive entrance in romania

One of the most important cinemas operators in the south-east Europe is entering aggressively on the Romanian market: Cinema City International, based in Netherlands and operating in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Israel, company listed over a year ago at the stock exchange market in Warsaw [Poland].

The first cinema city multiplex has been launched in Iasi [Iulius Mall, 5 screens, 830 seats] on the 16th November, the next being available in Timisoara starting 30th  November and two are being ongoing in Cluj [Iulius Mall] and Baia Mare [Gold Plaza/2.300 mp/8 halls]. The company has announced the opening of another three multiplex cinemas in shopping galleries in Arad, Bistrita and Galati and five in Bucharest, developed by real-estate Globe Trade Center. On the international level, Cinema City has in its portfolio 61 multiplex centers [508 screens], recording incomes of 80, 3 million euros in the first quarter of 2007.

In Romania [european country with lowest number of spectators], most important players are Movieplex Cinema [ subsiadiary of movieplex italy] and Hollywood Multiplex [part of local Media Pro Group, owned by COO CME, Adrian Sarbu]. Also greek operator Odeon [85 screens/ 9,000 seets in greece] anounced an investment of  20 million euro in Cluj [4 multiplex/ 8 screens/ 1,640 de seats].

inform is entering like an expres train in romania

 

the fourth edition of Romanian free daily Expres, was launched in Cluj, one of the biggest city in Romania. Inform Media printed the newspaper in 25 000 copies and the next week will reach 30,000 copies, and from November, to 35,000 copies, being distributed through paperboys and by boxes. Andrea Lukic, the publisher, says that the gradual circulation is necessary in order to establish the proper way of distributing the newspaper. Cluj Expres is the second free paper launched in 2007 (after Hunedoara Expres launched in september); the first titles were launched in 2005: Timis Expres (35,000 copies distributed in march 2007) and arad express (10,000 copies distributed in march 2007).

Inform Media, one of the most important romanian local media groups and part of the austrian group Vorarlberger Medienhaus, has announced few months ago the opening of a new printing house in Alba Iulia (after the one in Timisoara); their portfolio includes both free and paid newspapers. Inform has four newspapers in top 10 local paid newspaper, two of which are Magyar and is competing with germans form EMI/ArboMedia and local Publimedia [part of Media Pro Group]. the annual average sales of inform products are:
Adevarul Arad [23,266]/romanian language
Jurnal Bihorean  [13,293]/ romanian language
Bihari Naplo [12,906]/ hungarian language
Szatmari Fiss Usjag [10,404]/ hungarian language
Timpul [7,307] / romanian language
Cuvantul Liber [6,042]/ romanian language

The first independent figures of romanian sites after two months of monitoring

The media audit system BRAT has made official on monday the first figures of the Audience and Internet Traffic Survey for a number of 146 Romanian web sites, after two months during which the data were monitored by the new system.

The daily average of online single visitors in Romania according to the new system of monitoring from Brat is about 32% lower than the one monitored by competitor Trafic.ro, according to the first survey released and cited by dailybusiness.ro. The first ten most visited web sites  from 146 web sites monitored by Brat have recorded a daily average of 28.074 single clients in September. In Brat’s opinion, the single clients represents the number of computers from which a certain web page is visited in a certain period of time. The similar tool used by Trafic.ro is “absolute single visitor”. According to Trafic.ro. a single visitor is monitored one time, despite the number of its visits in a certain period of time.

“Presently we have 190 web sites monitored by Brat, but for 40 of them we shall make official their traffic data further, after they reach two months of monitoring according to our system”, declared for dailybusiness.ro Arina Ureche, General Director BRAT. She also said that, starting April-May 2008 there will be available, along traffic data, also some demographic information of the web sites.”This is based on an offline survey which will offer information about the structure and the number of the online users in Romania and also on an online survey on a representative pattern of the online users in our country and on the traffic data monitored by the SATI system”.

Brat’s representatives expect that, in the same time with the first figures published, the numbers of publishers who will register their web sites in SATI system should increase to over 40 web sites in the next two months. “All the major media trusts and almost all the important online publishers have already registered their web sites in our survey and we expect that from the moment of the first figures published on Monday, the numer of those who choose BRAT as their audit system to increase”, stated Ureche.

Ringier Romania is selling its daily sports newspaper

The transaction through which the president of Media Pro Group will regain the daily sports newspaper Pro Sport, is awaiting for the Competition Council approval, writes one of the romanian financial newspaper, Business Standard. The transaction value is worth EUR 8,3 million with VAT included. Although at the time of Pro Sport’s selling [2002], its first owner, Sarbu signed a contract which stipulated that he didn’t have the right to launch or to buy, for 5 years, any other daily newspaper, interdiction that had as deadline, February 2008, it can be violated thanks to the fact that the transaction involves the same companies, Media Pro and Ringier. The transaction takes places at 5 years since Sarbu has sold the same newspaper to the Ringier Romania for 6,5 million $, without VAT (7,7 million $ with VAT included// 8,1 million euros)

Adrian Sarbu, the MediaPro’s boss has studied the possibility of launching or buying a sports newspaper even since march, this year, but the opportunity became real when Central European Media Enterprises (CME) took over the television channel Sport.ro. A positive fact of this transaction is that it will make easier the access of Media Pro to the copyrights of the national football team games, starting 2008.

According to certain sources in the publishing industry, 2007 is the first year when ProSport doesn’t have any financial losses, the incomes from advertising space in 2007 being exceeded by 30%. The daily newspaper will be purchased by Sarbu through his company, Publimedia, which is owned by him integrally, whithout the American partner CME who is the main shareholder in other companies run by Sarbu on the audio-video segment.

Following this transaction, the Pro Sport’s employees who won’t agree to continue their work at the newspaper, will receive from Ringier a three months compensation in advance. Some rumors in the typography industry say that Ringier management has already noticed the printing houses in Timisoara and Cluj that the newspaper would no longer be printed in the certain locations.

At the time of its selling in 2002, Prosport was leader on the segment in terms of copies and audience, but Gazeta Sporturilor gained the first position, being run by one of the best journalists and press managers, Catalin Tolontan. Together with another well-known sports journalist, Ovidiu Ioanitoaia, has launched successfully daily sports newspaper prosport (in 1997), but after 6 months from the selling of the Media pro’s newspaper to Ringier, the whole team (108 people) has decided to leave the company and go to gazeta sporturilor [intact group] in order to make it number 1.
S1 2007:

Gazeta: 71.402
Prosport: 65.390

2006:
Prosport: 76.425
Gazeta: 73.423

2005:
Prosport: 67.063
Gazeta: 64.153