Sunday editions market registered significant ups and downs in 2010. The five most popular newspapers which take the first places in the list of advertisers strengthened their positions compared with the competition.
Last year was particularly important for the specific category of newspapers since the discussion on the "usefulness" of free pull-outs was resumed on the base of rising prices and declining revenues. As a result, several editions completely changed their policy in this regard.
The total cost of advertising in the Sunday editions of 2010, not including the cost of pull-outs, was estimated at 180.4 million euros. This makes it 18.3% lower compared to 2009.
It is important to note that last year was particularly severe for Sunday editions the sales of which fell after a relatively quiet first quarter due to the negative state of the Greek economy.
The number of editions remained almost the same compared to 2010, except for the newspapers Apogevmatini and Veto that announced they would not be published in November and December.
There are strong signs of fragmentation in this media sector as well as in electronic media, while the share of Sunday editions has dropped from 50.3% in 2009 to 45.44% in 2010 compared to other newspapers. At the same time, however, they remain the largest category in the press.
Only 6 of the 25 newspapers that were published during the Sundays of 2010 concentrated 70% of total advertising spending and only 3 (compared to 5 in 2009) were able to cross the 10% border. The vast majority of Sunday editions gained advertising share below 5%.
Six editions were given 5% of the advertising pie in 2009, while 11 papers were given share of less than 1 %. Their number in 2010, however, increased to 14.
Last year the Sunday edition of the Vima newspaper continued to be at the top of the list of ad spending with 16.06% share. Proto Theme ranked second with its share of 14.26% followed by Kathimerini newspaper with 11,74%, Real News with 9.9%, Eleftherotypia with 9.58% and Ethnos with 7.88%. The first free edition Free Sunday ranked seventh with its 6.04%.
Real News recorded the largest increase in the ad package with 2.22%.
The amount of ad spending does not equal the ad earnings of the companies which are believed to have decreased by about 20-30%. The economic crisis has caused all media to revise their pricing policies and a lot of people believe that this amount was greater. Based on these data, the ad package of Vima’s Sunday edition was around 28.9 million euros.
Meanwhile, the state television ERT announced the names of the 146 journalists who will be recruited for one year. The applicants applied on the website of the national media in October last year and did not know exactly when the results would be announced.
The lists were ready about a week ago but the management returned them to the selection committee ordering it to remove the names of children and relatives of permanent ERT employees. The final list was announced on January 18.
The very next day the management board of the Journalist Union in Athens described in a message the decision on the selection of journalists as unfair and stressed that the criteria should relate solely to the merits of the applicants.
"Unfortunately, we see that nothing has changed. Despite the pompous rhetoric of transparency, impartiality and single job appointments many of the new employees with temporary contracts work in competitive media. Some of them are even senior officials in printed media and television. At the same time, unemployed journalists experienced in the work of ERT are not employed," reads the message.
The Union of Journalists in Athens considered invalid appointments of people who work in several places and reiterates that "facilitation" and "their appointments are directly related to the rejection of unemployed colleagues. We state we will not take this as a fait accompli and will respond by all legal means."
According to the message the press office of the national TV released in response, the main criterion in the journalists selection was unemployment. It stresses that for the first time in the history of the national television journalists were appointed through an open public competition.
They claim from ERT that the great majority of the journalists employed were unemployed and that the condition that applicants are not allowed to work in competitive media in parallel was described in the notice of the competition. "It should be clear that this condition will be strictly enforced. No one will be appointed if he/she is not bound by his/her signature that meets those conditions when signing the contract," says the message of the national television.
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