Newspaper Innovation

The majority (60%) of the shares of the Czech edition of Metro was sold yesterday, December 21, to competitor Mafra, owned by German publisher Rheinische Post. Metro will be operated under a trade mark license. The paper will also be merged in the near future with Mafra’s own free newspaper Metropolitni Expres.

Metro is published in different editions for Prague/Bohemen and Moravia and has a circulation of 320,000. According to Metro there are 515,000 daily readers. The data for the first six months of 2007, however, reports only 341,000 daily readers (see previous post). (Metro International press release)

But even with this readership, Metro is the best read free daily in the Czech Republic before 24 Hodin and Metropolitni Expres. Since one month a special business free paper E15 was launched in Prague as well. There is also competition from paid papers, with 341,000 readers Metro was only the fifth paper in the country.

Heavy competition over the years had lead to many management changes in the Czech operation, but apparently not to real profits, although Metro reported net sales of €7.4m in 2006. The sale, however, must be a little painful because the Czech operation was the first Metro outside Sweden. It was launched in July 1997. In 2006 regional distribution was started.

The are 78 employees working for Metro in the Czech Republic. Mafra will offer joint advertising in Dnes, Lidové Noviny and Metro. As Metropolitni Expres was not mentioned in this plan, it would probably mean that this paper will be closed down soon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 am and is filed under Titles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.