The media market in 2022, Czech Republic

Growing inflation and the increasing costs of media companies' operations put pressure on the publishers of print titles during the year, who increased their selling prices multiple times, and several print titles also left the market. Even for other media companies, the growth of costs together with the constant search for effective business models in the digital age has become a matter of primary interest.

To cope with financial constraints, the public Czech Television announced an austerity regime that included termination of the ČT3 program, restrictions on filming of new programs and sports broadcasting (the historic sale of rights for the World Cup in Qatar to TV Nova), as well as job reductions. This situation prompted discussions in the parliament about increasing TV and radio license fees to support public service media. At the end of the year, the relatively stable property conditions on the market were stirred up by preparations for the merger of the companies Seznam.cz and Borgis (owns the newspaper Právo). The sale of the newspaper, which has been owned by editor-in-chief Zdeněk Porybný since the early 1990s, to the strongest domestic internet company will lead to a further increase in the concentration of the Czech media market.

Although no major mergers have been announced yet for 2023, we can expect the trend of ownership centralization to continue, which of course makes the bargaining position of media buyers quite difficult. We can also expect traditional media houses to continue to look for ways to penetrate and divest into the digital market.

In out of home advertisement, operators of advertising space on superposters on buildings in Prague considered the new decree on the regulation of outdoor advertising discriminatory and fought to have it repealed. The matter has not yet been decided. Major providers of CLV networks (MetroZoom, Rail Reklam, Holomotion, Ledmultimedia) continued transforming their static carriers into digital ones and/or expanding their networks of digital CLVs.

With respect to division of spending among media types, the situation remains unchanged over the past few years – TV share in the media mix is basically invincible, with online making marginal gains every year and other traditional media slowly dwindling. Sector spending copied market developments particularly in relation to COVID19, with a 29% increase in tourism, 33% leisure & entertainment, and 23% in alcoholic beverages spending, while government spending saw an 18% decrease.