Hungarian PM Orbán to open new front in battle against media

The paper said:

• Hungary’s Parliament may discuss a bill already this year that would fundamentally affect sales houses.
• The proposal would put media companies still guarding their independence in a disadvantaged position.
• The bill would prohibit the owner of a media company from operating a sales house.
• The owner of a media company would not be allowed to have either a direct interest or an interest via an associated company in a sales house that generates revenues from advertisements.
• This would hurt RTL the most, as the sales house R-Time sells advertisement space for eight channels of the group in a package, ensuring better revenues for each of the channels. Last year it had HUF 7 billion turnover and HUF 608 million profit.
• Allegedly, the R-Time will be cited as a reference for the new law, as the creators of the legislation claim its operation distorts the market.
• The company that is supposed to come at as a winner of the new law is Atmedia, a rival of R-Time, which took over selling the advertising time of TV2 Group and the public media.
• The law would be applied on the entire media sector.
• The measure would also affect the publisher of news portal index.hu, which has an indirect interest in CEMP Sales House.
• On the basis of this, the legislation would also affect Centrál Media Group, which operates news portal 24.hu.
• Origo.hu, which happens to be an interest of Tamás Szemerey, cousin of central bank (MNB) Governor György Matolcsy, would dodge this bullet, because the portal does not operate a sales house that would classify as an independent unit, according to company law.
• The draft of the bill has already been approved by Antal Rogán, minister in charge of communication and Árpád Habony, the mysterious spin doctor aiding or not aiding Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with his political wisdom, has also nodded on the plan.

The bill has not been submitted to Parliament so far because the cabinet wants to find out first what reaction it could expect from the German owner of RTL, the paper added.

Interference with market processes

Media companies which operate transparently and are accountable to their shareholders cannot afford to entrust a front with their company. Consequently, the proposal could be detrimental for them, while those involved in petty dealings will reap the benefits

, media economist Ágnes Urbán assessed the bill to the paper.

The bill on sales houses would be yet another blatant interference with market processes.

• Tags:
• média,
• economy,
• companies,
• advertisement,
• advertising,
• rtl group