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Media Landscape - Romania

INTRODUCTION

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With a population of 22 million and a total area of 237,500 sq km,Romania is the largest country in Central-Eastern Europe after Poland. A NATO member since 2004, Romania joined the European Union on 1 January 2007.

In the fall of 2004, the Social Democrat Party (PSD), seen by many as a continuator of the former communist party, lost the elections to the ‘Justice and Truth’ alliance comprised of the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Democrat Party (PD), which later formed the government together with the Conservative Party (PC) and the Hungarian Union (UDMR). The new president, Traian Basescu, has won the electoral battle against Adrian Nastase, the former social democrat prime minister.

Romanian is the official language, with almost 90 percent of the population formed of ethnic Romanians. According to official figures, the largest minority groups are the Hungarian (6.6%) and the Roma (2.5%). About 50 percent of the population live in rural areas, which causes distribution problems for print media. Newspapers are almost exclusively being sold in urban communities. Penetration of cable TV and the Internet is also much lower in rural areas.


1. WRITTEN PRESS

The Romanian print media is characterised firstly by the vast number of titles on the market. In total, there are more than 2,000 publications, more than 70 of which are daily newspapers.

The quality of top newspapers has been increasing, apart from improving their design and print quality, they have started to increase the number of pages and develop special sections and weekly supplements in the past two years. Business, sports and lifestyle are starting to get more coverage. supplements and Sunday editions are published. Also, newspapers, which tended to be highly politicised are shifting their focus toward other subjects.

There is a trend toward changing to compact formats lately. Only a few of the top newspapers have maintained a broadsheet format. Others have moved to formats such as Berliner, Tabloid, or the American long-format. The best selling newspaper is Libertatea, a soft tabloid which sells around 260,000 copies a day. The most successful regional newspaper is Gazeta de Sud, distributed in four counties in Southern Romania, selling about 30,000 copies a day.

As for many newspapers circulation is not audited by the Romanian Audit Bureau of Circulation (BRAT), it is difficult to estimate the general circulation for dailies. However, it should be somewhere around two million copies a day. The weeklies market is not as vivid. Most of the best-selling weeklies are Sunday editions of the top dailies. There is a booming glossy market, with more than a dozen women’s magazines, a few men’s magazines, as well as auto, computers, cooking and other niche products.

Both sales figures and readership figures have been in decline for most dailies and weeklies in the past few years, due partly to market fragmentation, while advertising revenue is on the increase. However, the print media share from the advertising pie has been further cut in favour of TV. In terms of ownership, there is a trend toward concentration around several strong groups, but also one toward fragmentation due to the increasing number of titles on the market.


2. AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

Television is the most popular means of entertainment for Romanians. Almost 90 percent of the advertising pie goes to TV, thus national channels have been mostly after the urban population aged 18 to 49, the most attractive segment for advertisers. Members of this age group watch TV on average 36.4 hours a week, one of the highest levels in Europe.

Most Romanians are being reached by TV through cable networks. There are two main companies which have managed to swallow almost all competitors and which share the market in almost equal chunks: RDS/RCS, and UPC. Digital television is still in its infancy.

Big local and international groups own the most successful TV and radio stations in Romania, such as the American-based CME, the Scandinavian company SBS or the French-based group Lagardere. The Turkish group Dogan has also been reported to start a large entertainment TV station in 2007.

The radio scene is dominated by private FM stations in cities with more than 300 licences for FM radio stations having been issued by the National Broadcasting Council. The public news station Radio Romania Actualitati, which is not bound by geographically limited FM frequencies, is most popular in rural areas, together with regional stations belonging to the public network.

No private non-FM stations are operating in Romania.


3. NEWS AGENCIES

The supremacy of Mediafax, a private news agency which is part of the Media Pro group, was uncontested until recently. However, the state agnecy, Rompres has started to improve its coverage lately and competition is growing as new private press agencies appear.

The Realitatea Media group has started in the summer of 2006 a new press agency, NewsIn. Another large media group, Voiculescu family’s Intact, has recently bought an insignificant news agency called Amos News, which it plans to transform in yet another competitive player on the market. Smaller agencies include Click News, a cooperation between several local newspapers, and Bucharest-based AM Press, which specialises in political reporting.

International wire services Reuters, AP and France Presse all have local bureaus in Bucharest. Other foreign agencies, like Bloomberg, have permanent correspondents.


4. ONLINE MEDIA

Over six million people are online, and broadband is growing at a rapid pace. According to the National Authorities for Communications quoted by underclick.ro, high speed internet has grown by 96 percent in the past two years, ammounting to over 750,000 broadband connections.

Online advertising is bringing more money to the industry, hence competition is growing more fierce. Most traditional media outlets have online versions. A number of newspapers and television stations have recently created special journalistic departments to take care of their online presence, and newspaper sites are moving from shovelware content to content developed or adapted for the web by teams of online journalists.

Weblogs or blogs are becoming more popular and influential. New blogs pop up every day, and a growing number of large news sites develop blog sections.


5. MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

A confederacy of journalists’ and typographers’ unions has promoted and negotiated a collective labor contract for the media industry. Signing the collective agreement with the ownership in the spring of 2004 was considered a great success by the union, as it guarantees for the first time certain rights for journalists.

Although unions exist and there are over 40 media organizations, there is no representative organisation for all Romanian journalists. The most prominent organization of the Romanian media is the Romanian Press Club, which is in fact an employers’ association protecting and promoting the economic interests of several central media institutions, and not those of the journalists working there.

The advertising industry is represented by the Romanian branch of the International Advertising Association (IAA). It includes about 85 members, including advertisers like Coca Cola, advertising agencies, media, research, PR and marketing companies.

One of the most important organisations in the media industry is BRAT (The Romanian Audit Bureau of Circulation), which is seen by the advertisers as an essential instrument to certify and study the printrun, sales and audiences of newspapers.


6. MEDIA POLICIES

There is no media law in Romania as such. However, there are other laws which affect the media. The audiovisual field is regulated by the Audiovisual Law adopted in 1992, with the National Broadcasting (or Audiovisual) Council (NBC) established in 1990 as the sole supervisor of the Romanian TV and radio stations. The NBC has 11 members appointed by the Parliament, the Government and the President. The council issues and withdraws broadcasting licenses, prepares rules and regulations and monitors the stations to see if the rules are respected.

The right to information is recognized by the Romanian Constitution and (since the end of 2001) by the Law on Access to Public Information, which obliges government institutions to announce any information of public interest. Libel and slander have recently been decriminalised.

The public channels are being supported through a license fee, as well as money from the state budget and advertising. There are no government subsidies to independent print and broadcast media. State advertising was considered as ‘masked subsidy’ in 2000-2004, but the practice to place large sums of advertising money to certain newspapers has stopped with the new government.


7. ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

The communication regulatory authority is the National Broadcasting Council, acting as the main watchdog of the audiovisual, as well as the institution resposible to issue broadcasting licenses.

Ethics codes have been developed by various organisations, the Romanian Press Club has its own ethics code as well. It has also issued a set of editorial policy principles. There is no overall self-regulating body to sanction foul play.

Some NGOs have started to run campaigns in order to raise awareness on professional issues for both journalists and media consumers. An NGO formed in 2005, called the Association of Media Consumers, has taken upon itself to act on behalf of Romanian readers, listeners and viewers. However, the association does not have a high profile yet.


8. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND FUTURE TRENDS

Local journalists have often been victims of political and economic pressure, which often lead to biased stories and also to selfcensorship. Competition is becoming fiercer due to new investments. This has lead to concentration, as more outlets are grouped around a handful of media groups, but also to fragmentation due to the launching of new titles.

We are witnessing a somewhat paradoxical situation: although a healthier economic climate would normally lead to fewer but better titles on the market, the reality is quite the contrary. There is now a growing number of media institutions, but the number of good professionals in the business is not increasing at the same pace. As media analyst Iulian Comanescu noted, the overall quality of Romanian journalism is decreasing because the same number of professionals are being fought over by an increasing number of media institutions. The new wave of investments is good news to media people and bad news for media consumers, who are bound to get more diverse but poorer quality products.

Excerpt from EUROPEAN MEDIA GOVERNANCE: THE NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS, published by Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.com).

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