The political environment of the media market in 2022, Baltics

With the outbreak of the war, the governments of Baltic states decided to close all possible channels for Russian propaganda, so as a result almost all TV channels with content produced in Russia were banned. The most serious consequences came about in Latvia (there were the biggest share Russian TV channels due to the highest share of Russian speaking people): lack of TV air time, TV prices increasing for other channels, loss of TV audience. Other media such as online, radio and outdoor received unexpected amounts of money due to the inability to spend it on TV. To improve the situation with places for advertising, TV groups added new channels with Ukrainian-produced content to the lists, and started producing local content in Russian language, but all these efforts failed to bring TV statistics back to pre-war levels. Some advertisers stopped using Russian language in their ad campaigns.