The Romanian Media - an Overview
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38 Informatica Economică, nr. 2 (42)/2007 The Romanian Media - An Overview Laura MALIŢA West University of Timişoara The Romanian Media Sector from the last 17 years can be described as a dinamic one. In the current study, which is also a part of national report of the Grundtvig 2 project “The Influence of Media in Adult Education Development” 06-G2-94-TM-RO-C, we divided the media sector into: printed media, audio-visual media, media based on web and new media. Within this article, I tried to present a short history, state of the art, as well as the tendencies on short term, for each of them. Keywords: newspapers, audiovizual media, media based on the web, new media. ntroduction The state of the art I Soon after the fall of communism, in Ro- A. The written press mania media began a new road, a democratic The majority of the Romanian publications one. Romanian media landscape has evolved are weeklies, supplemented by a couple of in different directions and Romanians cannot hundreds of daily1 newspapers. There are al- complain about the number of media outlets. so TV guides and the market specialized and The specific enthusiasm of those years gen- niche magazines (weeklies, monthlies etc.). erated the emergence of an enormous number Newspapers published in the major cities of newspapers, much different than in the have a local or regional circulation. Major previous period. So, more than 1200 new ti- cities like Timisoara, Iasi, Cluj, Brasov, Ga- tles emerged in 1990-1991, in fact of only lati, Constanta, Craiova, and Sibiu have two few years later, in 1996, the number of these to six dailies. In the capital Bucharest there titles increased to 106 dailies and 1781 other are over 20 dailies being published and most periodicals. Nowadays there are about 1500 of them have a national circulation. publications in Romania. In past years, Romanian newspapers were If initially media was oriented towards sensa- visible the tendency to overestimate their tionalism and tabloid-style journalism in or- print run and circulation in order to attract der to attract and keep audiences, five years advertisers. Now, the total market of the Ro- after, some media start to address the new manian national newspapers rises to roughly category of Romanian business people. 915.000 distributed copies. You can see the However, the evolution of the media has also top 10 newspapers in the following table been greatly influenced by political or eco- (Figure 1), according to nomical circles (political people, period of http://www.comanescu.ro/. the national or local elections, ). They often The Romanian written press is concentrated used the media as a tool to gain influence and around five big companies or people: Ringier political power and, of course, to try to keep Romania, Dan Voiculescu, Dinu Patriciu, it. Adrian Sarbu and Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, as you Freedom House classified in 2003 the Roma- can see in the figure 2. nian media as “partially free” and Ioana Mainly because of distribution problems, all Avadanei (head of the Centre for Independ- Romanian dailies are morning newspapers ent Journalism) said “media is as good as the and there are no afternoons or evening ones. society is”. Even there are plenty of pro- It would be too difficult, given the present in- gresses, anyone know the Romanian society frastructure, to produce and sell afternoon or is still plagued by corruption, scandals, lack evening editions. of economic resources and political battles. 1 A comprehensive list of the Romanian daily news- papers and other publications with links to their web- sites is available at www.ziare.com. Informatica Economică, nr. 2 (42)/2007 39 Figure 1. The top 10 newspapers best sold Figure 2. The big 5 on the Romanian media market Source: http://www.comanescu.ro B. The audiovisual media In 2001 the National Broadcasting Council 1. TV market reported 2,093,121 households, or almost 27 “During communism period, the regime had per cent of the total number of households, suppressed one of the two existing public TV were subscribed to cable television. In 2005 channels and had reduced the national broad- there were 3, 5 million of subscribers (which casting to firstly two and later three hours makes Romania the fifth country in Europe every week-day. At present, public television by number of cable subscribers). At the end broadcasts through two mainland channels - of 2002, there were 52% of households with TVR 1, a general interest channel, and TVR cable television. In Bucharest and other big 2 which focuses on cultural and educative cities, the percent of households watching programmes, and two international satellite TV per cable reaches 80-90 percent. channels - TVR International and TVR Cul- There are 625 TV operators registered, but tural. There are also several regional chan- the most important TV cable companies are nels belonging to the public television, with UPC (now joint with Astral Telecom) and TVR Timisoara, TVR Cluj and TVR Iasi be- RCS. ing the most prominent ones. TVR 1 how- The Romanian spent a lot of their spare time ever remains the only national channel cover- in front of TV – much more over than the ing almost the entire territory of the country.” Eurpean average, according to the latest re- (Ulmanu, 2004) port of the Eumap in this matter. The surveys There are private owners for the TV channels highlighted that the Romanian advertising and the most important are ProTV, Antena 1, between the 70’ and 80’ went to TV stations, Prima TV and Acasa TV. The first two have that being the most important information re- more viewers in the cities than the public source for more than 80% of the inhabitants television. Other stations broadcasting na- of our country. In spite of the TV’s consup- tionally via satellite are Pro Cinema, TV K tion level, too exagerated for one of us, and Lumea, OTV and Realitatea TV, the first all- even of the pressure exercited of new media, news channel, TV Sport, National TV and it’s obvious the evolution of the Romanian National TV News, B1TV, Etno etc. In addi- market. This is sign that the audiences and tion, there are many local stations, usually af- the other relevant scores, as the advertising filiated with a national operator. data, will mantain at the same level in the Big international names such as HBO, Hall- next few years. mark, Fox Kids, Discovery, National Geo- After the big success encountered by Reali- graphic, Animal Planet and Eurosport, dis- tatea TV and Acasa TV stations in the last tributed via the cable, have programmes few years, the number of Romanian TV sta- translated into Romanian. tions niche increased considerably. The ex- 40 Informatica Economică, nr. 2 (42)/2007 perts predict the continuity of these phe- channels broadcasting their own programmes nomenon in the next years. in different languages, too. On the radio market, the first private FM ra- 2. Radio Market dio station appeared in 1990 in Bucharest but The public national radio is the most popular even now, there are no AM private stations in Romania with nationally broadcasting on as yet.. At present there are more than 150 AM and FM. It has four national channels private local FM stations which broadcast (News, Culture, Youth and Music), an inter- mainly music and hourly news bulletins. national channel and ten local or regional The most important networks are estab- lished by Radio Contact (re-branded into Figure 3. The national market shares pie Kiss FM), Radio ProFM and Radio Uni- plus (re-branded into Star FM). FM sta- tions are usually music stations with short news bulletins and few other shows. The most influential owner is the French Group Lagardere. The public national radio stays the most popular in Romania, according to the lat- est Association for Radio Audience (ARA, Sept. 9-oct. 29, 2006) figures, as you can see in the figure 3, and Europa FM is now the audience leader in the FM Source: The Romanian Association for Media segment. Audience C. Web-based media Broadband, cable, ADSL or mobile connec- The government estimates in 2005 Internet tions are usually too expensive for the aver- traffic to stand at about 24 per cent. Trafic.ro, age Romanian, which limits such options to Romania’s most used web audience meas- the big companies and NGOs. Unfortu- urement system, announced that in the month natelly, still home users connect mostly via of October, it has counted over 7 million2 dial-up modem, even cable connections are Romanian unique visitors. increseaning very much. More than that, TV If in year 2007, rate of internet was around cable operators have started to upgrade their 28%, for 2007 MCTI estimate a similar rate infrastructure and to offer cable access at rea- to other countries from European Union. sonable prices. Additionally, our govern- From total number of internet users, more ments try to extend Internet infrastructure than half are "heavy users", but only a small with at least two new and important projects: percent go online from home, while most do PowerLine Communications and Broadband it from the office, from school, or from Inter- in Gas. So, a lot of disadvataged regions (vil- net cafes.3 lages, cities etc.) will be able to have Internet access and equal chances to knowledges, to 2 Romania has around 3,7 million Internet users aged programmes, to opportunities etc. 14-64 years, in the urban areas, according to the July There are very big diferences between rural 2005-July 2006 SNA (National Audience Study). The difference between SNA and Trafic.ro is given by the area and urban area.