Poland's Agora to launch new daily, hit Q4 results

Leading Polish media group Agora will launch a new nationwide daily in coming months and the project's high start-up costs will significantly depress its fourth-quarter results, the company said on Tuesday.

In its statement, Agora, owner of the upmarket daily Gazeta Wyborcza, did not give specific cost estimates for the project.

"The new daily will be launched this autumn. It will not be a tabloid but a mid-market newspaper. We are not going to compete for readers with other dailies, but rather fill a niche and broaden the readership in Poland," Agora's CEO Wanda Rapaczynska told a news conference.

Gazeta Wyborcza had long ranked first in terms of readership in Poland, central Europe's biggest publishing market, but lost its leading position after German media giant Axel Springer launched its tabloid Fakt in late 2003.

Industry experts were divided on whether Agora's new daily could survive on the cut-throat newspaper market in the European Union newcomer of 38 million people, where four nationwide newspapers compete aggressively for readers.

Some said that with economic recovery underway, growing advertising budgets in Poland and still very low readership of newspapers, the new title could successfully fill a niche between two highbrow dailies and two tabloids.

"We haven't seen the paper yet but it appears that there is a niche to fill in the market and this project has a chance to succeed," said Michal Marczak, analyst at BRE Bank in Warsaw.

Agora, which apart from its flagship Wyborcza also controls radio stations, a billboard firm and a colour magazine business, saw its shares lose 1.7 percent to 67.80 zlotys by 1251 GMT while the large cap WIG 20 index inched down 0.4 percent.

BATTLE FOR READERS

Sold at half of Wyborcza's price, Fakt attracted readers with the skin-and-scandal formula that made its German daily Bild such a success. In the first half of this year, its average copy sales stood at 519,000 compared with Wyborcza's 467,000.

"There will be another war, but I would not expect it to be a costly as when Fakt was launched. Agora has its own resources and can do (this advertising campaign) through its billboard firm or Gazeta Wyborcza," Marczak added.

To defend its flagship newspaper's position, Agora began to launch various publishing projects aimed at boosting copy sales, including editions of a world encyclopaedia, 19th and 20th century classic novels and dictionaries sold with Wyborcza.

In terms of advertising revenues, Agora, targeted at well-educated readers, retained its lead. In the second quarter of this year, it had 43 percent share in the Polish newspaper ad sector, compared with Fakt's 6.5 percent.

Rapaczynska said Agora estimated the advertising market would grow by around 10 percent year-on-year in both the third and the fourth quarters of this year.

(Source: Reuters)

Public Relations in Poland