RTL Nederland, the Dutch branch of Europe’s largest commercial broadcaster, has announced a drop of almost 20 percent in its profits in 2008 compared to 2007. While turnover increased by seven percent due to a number of acquisitions, profits fell from 85 million euros in 2007 to 70 million euros in 2008.
In 2007, RTL Nederland took over the Netherlands’ biggest commercial radio station, Radio 538, and Big Brother originator John de Mol’s Talpa. Talpa was launched in 2005 in an attempt to break the dominance of RTL and SBS6 in the commercial broadcasting sector.
However, the acquisition of Talpa was not enough to make up for the loss of broadcasting rights for the European Football Championship and the Beijing Olympic Games. It was public broadcaster NOS that won the rights to air the two major sporting events of 2008.
(Source: RNW News)
on Mar 13th, 2009 at 16:05
When the drop is 20% for a major media company like RTL, the drop is much higher for smaller media organisations.
Sales-men of commercials for radio expect a drop of some 50% during 2009.
Advertisers tend to cut media budgets first when they come into financial problems.
This years will be extreme hard for the media, in this country I expect more radio stations to go following Arrow.