Media companies planning to unify Estonian tabloids

Mar 16, 2000
By Kairi Kurm

The publication of Ohtuleht and Sonumileht together brought 35 million kroons ($2.3 million) loss to the media concerns last year. According to Gunnar Kobin, chairman of the board at Ekspress Group, the two media companies are now planing to get rid of that loss. The cooperation between two rival companies helps to reduce management, printing, distribution and financial costs, as well as to save on marketing and administrative costs. One of the new joint ventures will be established for publishing and the other one for editing the new publication.

"It is too early to predict the circulation for the new joint newspaper, because we do not know whether we want two newspapers or one," said Kobin.

Although the circulation of Ohtuleht is bigger than the circulation of Sonumileht, the share of both parties in the new joint venture will be 50/50. The circulation of Ohtuleht is about 44, 000 copies a week, while Sonumileht publishes 30,000 copies.

Both companies have been controlled by Scandinavian media corporations since 1998, when Estonian Media was taken over by Norway's Schibsted and Swedish Bonnier acquired half of the shares of Ekspress Grupp. The other half of Ekspress Grupp belongs to an Estonian businessman Hans H. Luik. According to the dailyEesti Paevaleht the initiative to unify two tabloids came from Schibsted.

Although the possibility of the tabloids' unification was discussed for more than half a year, the news came as a surprise to the employees of both tabloids.

The two media companies may also decide to combine some of the competing publications or terminate the production of similar publications. According to the management of both media concerns, the daily Eesti Paevaleht and Postimees will not be unified. Postimees with its 60,000 copies a week is the most popular newspaper in Estonia. The circulation of Eesti Paevaleht is 40,000 copies a week.

Estonian Media is the publisher of the leading Estonian daily Postimees, the tabloid Sonumileht, five local newspapers and magazines. Estonian Media also owns a majority share in a printing shop Kroonpress and two distribution companies.

Ekspress Grupp publishes the daily Eesti Paevaleht, the tabloid Ohtuleht, the weekly Eesti Ekspress and several magazines. Ekspress Grupp owns the Kroontrukk printing office.

Ekspress Grupp received a 48.7-million kroon loss last year, while Estonian Media ended the year with a 5-million kroon profit thanks to the sale of the Plusspunkt newsstand chain.

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