Concentration (Vertical and Horizontal Integration, Cross-Ownership)

declarative and they have never been applied. In Latvia, the Radio and Television Law has one section on restrictions of concentration and monopolisation of electronic mass media. The laws says that a person who is the sole founder of a broadcasting organisation or whose investment in a broadcasting organisation ensures control of it, or the spouse of such a person, may not own more than 25 per cent of shares (capital share) in other broadcasting organisations. Political parties are not allowed to establish broadcasting organizations.⁴⁴

Table 6.Ten largest Norwegian newspapers, region, (number of copies sold) and how much the largest actors in the newspaper market own.

So just one newspaper of the ten largest does not belong wholely or partly to Schibsted ASA, Orkla Media AS (or A-Pressen).

Of the 225 listed newspapers in the Media Register, the circulation of 15 papers is not mentioned (some are free of charge, some did not supply data for some reason). 155 papers have a circulation of under 10 000 copies per edition. About 102 have a circulation under 5 000 sold copies. It is quite singular, that such a large number of papers with such low circulation are able to survive, and that is very typical for the Norwegian newspaper structure. Many of the small papers belong to the larger regional papers, which again are often partly or fully owned by one of the largest actors on the market. Others are driven by local owners such as local investors or the local administration. The demand is quite high, because the Norwegians in the provinces like to read local papers and to get news about what is happening in their neighbourhood.

So the subscriptions and the press subsidies help the small papers to survive. Small changes in these regulations would change the newspaper structure radically.

Although there are also other actors on the market such as foreign investment banks or foreign media companies (representing globalised capital) or the Norwegian former state monopoly (today mostly TV distribution, and engagements with shares in media), the concentration of ownership historically began in the newspapers. And the three largest actors in the market today still have their base in the newspaper business.

In Estonia, Eesti Meedia simultaneously owns radio and television channels, magazines, a printing plant and distribution system.

Cross-media ownership in Estonia already exists on the national level, although it has had a great impact on local level too. In order to discuss some problems of cross-media ownership and concentration in the Estonian context, the Tartu case seems to be most suitable. In Tartu (the second largest city with around 100 000 inhabitants in 2003) the traditionally local paper Postimees(Eesti Meedia) became unofficially national already during Soviet times (then called Edasi). In 1997 its main office moved to Tallinn and only one department for the production of the local supplement was left in Tartu.

The local radio of Tartu (Tartu Raadio, started in 1991) was also bought by Eesti Meedia. In August 2003 Eesti Meedia purchased 34% of the Trio Radio Group, as well. The oldest local radio Tartu Raadiowas affiliated to Radio Kuku, the full-time service was replaced by some locally broadcast inserts. By March 2003 also the local morning show as well as some

Schibsted ASA 100%

Dagbladet AS / owned by Orkla Media Schibsted ASA 100%

Orkla Media 28.5% / Schibsted ASA 24.4%

31.9% Schibsted ASA / 17.2% Orkla Media AS 31.5% Schibsted ASA / 38.8% Others Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidenes AS⁴⁵ 100%

100% Orkla Media AS

25% Schibsted ASA / 50.6% Others 256 639

186 136 155 366 90 087 86 570 70 101 69 262 45 271 45 125 Nationwide

Nationwide Oslo Hordaland Sør-Trøndelag Rogaland Nationwide Buskerud Vest-Agder Aftenposten

Dagbladet Aftenposten Aften Bergens Tidende Adresseavisen Stavanger Aftenblad Dagens Næringsliv Drammens Tidende Fædrelandsvennen

Paper VG

Coverage Nationwide

Circulation 380 190

Ownership Schibsted ASA 100%

45 The “Norges Handels og Sjøfartstidenes AS” is partly owned by Dagbladet AS (20.5%), three other investors have roundabout 15% each of them. An insurance company holds 5,1%, and others: 30,6%.

. . . .

. . . .

other longer programmes were cancelled and replaced by the syndicated programme from the main office. The most probable cause for closing down the popular local programme was to avoid overlapping of formats of Tartu Raadioand Kuku. One could argue that losing one local morning programme does not mean that local journalism has disappeared. Especially if the public radio and television local studios remain. Still the most problematic aspect concerning concentration on a regional level is that, slowly and obliviously, the local forum becomes marginal. Some local production usually remains and the local news is produced mainly for the national audience.

Currently Postimeeshas a special staff of 13 journalists that produce the local supplementTartu Postimees. They also produce journalistic material for the “main” paper. After the shutdown of Tartu Radio the local studio with three reporters remained, but now they produce information from Tartu and South-Estonia for the national audience. The Tartu studio of the public radio (7 local journalists) produce 1 hour of extended news programming each day for the listeners of South-Estonia as well as short news 4 times per pay for the national audience and two radio magazine programmes for the national audience). In addition, the Tartu department of public TV produces some hours of programming for the national audience.

Currently Tartu does not have a free paper. According to Nuust (2003) a common advertising department with Postimees was one of the reasons why the free paper for Tartu called Tartu Börs (established by the Eesti Meedia corporation in 2000) that became very popular, but did not earn money was closed in 2001. The advertising department was primarily concerned with attracting money for the main paper.

Most of the 13 traditional regions (administrative units) have one regional newspaper and very few have a local radio station. There are two exceptions (the largest Pärnu and the smallest Hiiumaa – which have two regional papers). In addition, free papers are issued in the three largest towns of Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu.

Of these 15 papers one (the biggest, circulation 16 000) belongs to the Eesti Meedia 100% and 4 belong to Eesti Meedia 42 – 56%. Hence we can conclude that AS Eesti Meedia owns a chain of regional newspapers.

In Latvia, the JSC Diena is the dominant owner of regional and local newspapers. According to TNS BMF Latvia, local newspapers in 2003 had an 8% share of the advertising income in print media which itself has a 45.8% share of all advertising expenditure. The link between the regional and local newspapers and the national newspaper Diena, also owned by JSC Diena, gives the company opportunities to offer a better package to advertisers. Although JSC Diena owns not only newspapers, a subscription and distribution centre, as well as a printing house, the company has not moved into the radio and television business. However,Dienahas shown that even without having joint ownership structures it is possible for a newspaper to co-operate with certain radio and TV stations on various social and sales promotion projects. In December 2004, for instance, the daily Dienaand the television channel TV3carried out a joint project called Latvia’s Pride that focused on quite unknown people that had done something good for other people and that Latvia could be proud of. In a similar way during the same period,Latvian public TV, the daily Latvijas Avı¯zeand the news portal Apolloinvited their viewers, readers and Internet users to take part in a poll to find the top 100 personalities in Latvian history. Sometimes the co-operation coalitions among Latvian media companies are different. One could possibly claim that a situation where no TV or radio station in Latvia owns or has the same owner as any of the largest newspapers – or vice versa – ensures that the media companies from one sector can choose co-operation partners from another media sector more freely than in a situation where there would have been ownership links across the sectors.

As mentioned above, there are ownership links in Latvia between the two private national television broadcasters and the two most popular private national radio broadcasters.TV3is owned by the same company as Radio Star FMand LNT owns half of Radio SWH. Moreover,LNTshares resources with TV5that is linked through its former owner Grafton Entertainment to the Internet portal Tvnet. There is a link from the website of TV3to Radio Star FM.Tvnethas online TV links to LNT, TV5 (Rı¯ga Online)and Latvian public TV, but not to TV3.

When in June 2003 it was reported by the daily Diena(Ara¯ja 2003) that the competing daily Latvijas Avı¯ze(then Lauku Avı¯ze) had possibly been bought by the Ventspils-based company Ventbunkers, speculations started that this might in the long run result in a merger between Latvijas Avı¯zeand Neatkarı¯ga¯ Rı¯ta¯ Avı¯zeand their staff if the owners considered the argument of saving money as more important than the importance of having two instruments of public influence.

Ventbunkers has ownership relations to Ventspils Nafta that owns Mediju Nams, which in turn owns Neatkarı¯ga¯ Rı¯ta¯ Avı¯ze.

Until 24 December 2004 Latvijas Avı¯zehas made no confirmation of its ownership relations to Ventbunkers and both newspapers and their staff exist as separate entities.

In Lithuania, the Achemos grupe˙ UAB operates as a powerful cross-media consortium. The best illustration of horizontal (or mono-media) concentration is the case of several commercial radio stations (M-1, M1 Plius, Lietus and Laluna) with only one owner, or a publishing company such as Respublikos leidiniai UAB (The Respublika Group) that publishes the third largest national daily Respublika, has shares in regional newspapers (Vakaru˛ ekspresasfor Klaipe˙da city with 300 000 inhabitants), and publishes the national tabloid VL: Vakaro zˇinios. Lietuvos rytas UAB, the publisher of the largest national daily, has shares in the regional newspaper Paneve˙zˇio rytas, TV magazine TV Antena, weekly Ekstra, etc. As a matter of fact there are media owned by large capital groups such as Achemos grupe˙, which owns the national daily Lietuvos zˇinios, radio stations Radiocentras, RC2, etc., or the new Lithuanian business conglomerate MG Baltic which partly owns the Lithuanian news agency ELTAand one of the strongest commercial TV channels LNK. The arrival of industrial capital into the Lithuanian media is an interesting phenomenon indeed. On the one hand, this may be prompted by other goals than to become a profitable media company, yet, on the other hand, this may also indicate that the media is becoming a profitable area to invest in (esp. television).