MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA
economic magnates, who can subsidize loss-making enterprises by means
of other successful activities.“
3 Economic crisis and accession of local oligarchs
The accession of local oligarchs and entrepreneurial groups which
buy newscasting media from foreign investors is a trend that has
characterized a large part of the region of Central and Eastern Europe
over the last years. Experts explain oligarchy as economically powerful
financial groups, operating in key areas (energetic, health care, grocery,
and media) and entrepreneurs attached to the state. All the above
mentioned branches directly inluence lives of people in the country and
their levels.
For majority of foreign companies the main reason to leave has been
and still is a fall in incomes caused or multiplied by consequences of the
economic crisis from 2008 and 2009. Namely, the fall of inancial markets
and a follow-up global economic recession affected media markets in
the Central and Eastern Europe on average much more intensively than
majority of other European countries.
The deepest falls were seen in Baltic countries and Rumania. Total
expenses on advertising, which is a key source of incomes, decreased
more than 40% in these countries. Investments into advertising in
newspapers have even decreased from 2008 to 2010 on average in 70%
in Latvia and Rumania and more than in a half in Estonia and Lithuania.
The economic crisis seems to only reveal and start deeper structural
problems, which were primarily in the sector of the print media
present before it had broken out. Multinational media corporations
and Western publishers owned media primarily for the sake of proit.
With only minor exceptions, in the last years they have been replaced
by domestic entrepreneurial elites, often attached to the state, having
economic centre of interest in other key areas, e.g. in energetic, inancial
engineering, immovable assets or health care. 5
One of the irst foreign owners, who reacted to the crisis by leaving, was
the publisher of the Latvian daily Diena. Even the reputation of one of the
5 ŠTĚŤKA, V.: Oligarchovia v médiách nie sú problém len Česka a Slovenska
[online]. [2015-04-02] Available at: .
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