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Italian broadcaster Mediaset has acquired a minority stake in German
pay-TV broadcaster ProSiebenSat1.Media, reported daily Il Sole 24 Ore (May 29). Mediaset gets 9.6% of the capital shares and 9.9% of voting rights for about €350 million. The object for both companies is moving across borders to compete with now entrenched streaming services.
“We European media operators in need to join forces to continue to compete or even just resisting in terms of European cultural identity to any hostile entrances of global giants,” said Mediaset chief executive Pier Silvio Berlusconi. Rumors have been rife for months about a possible merger of the two broadcasters. Mediaset and French media house Vivendi were on the road to merger-land three years until a quite public falling out. Vivendi, which owns TV broadcaster Canal+ Group and music publisher Universal Music Group, holds a 28.8% stake in Mediaset but recently has been denied access to shareholder meetings. (See more about Mediaset here)
Both companies vehemently denied any intention of forming a pan-European TV broadcaster that Italian daily Il Messaggero reported (May 31). Mediaset is active in Italy, obviously, and Spain. ProSiebanSat1.Media primarily operates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “We are not engaged in such discussions,” said ProSeibenSat chief executive Max Conze, quoted by Reuters (May 31). ProSiebenSat and Discovery Communications are in the Joyn streaming TV joint-venture. When not listening for Netflix footsteps, broadcasters are waiting with baited breath for the Comcast-Sky and Disney+ to appear.
The financial world is all atwitter and reporting that huge private equity firm KKR is negotiating to take big publisher Axel Springer private. According to Reuters, Bloomberg, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal (May 29), the Springer family and company chief executive Mathias Döpfner want KKR to acquire the 44.8% of shareholdings in free float then de-list the company from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Friede Springer, widow of the founder, and Herr Döphner hold 45.5% of the shares. Stakes just under 10% are held by Frau Springer’s grandchildren.
Chief executives of publicly-traded companies quite often lament those shareholders beyond their control invading the annual general meetings carrying signs extolling the virtues of unlocked shareholder value. This is anathema for growth-oriented CEOs who would like to invest in new strategic opportunities rather than dividend payments. As the Axel Springer SE share price jumped 20% in one day (May 30), the company announced that KKR, Herr Döpfner and the Springer family have made an offer for all free float shares, details to be shared soon. (See more about media in Germany here)
Axel Springer is known, mostly, as a traditional publisher - best for German tabloid Bild and news magazine Die Welt - with clear aspirations as a big player in classified advertising and digital media. The company acquired online news portal Business Insider in 2015. It opened a Silicon Valley office in 2014. Most reports on the benefits include the terms “digital” and “international expansion.” The most often mentioned acquisition target - if any of this comes to pass - is Ebay. (See more about Axel Springer SE here)
KKR, shorthand for Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, can muster billions for an attractive deal. They have done it before. And they have experience with German media. With private equity brother Permira it took control of pay-TV broadcaster and production house ProSiebenSat in 2006, merging it with SBS Broadcasting, which they acquired a year earlier. By 2014 KKR and Permira exited that investment at a 20% cumulative gain, reported the Financial Times (January 17, 2014). The SBS Broadcasting Scandinavian assets were sold a year earlier to Discovery Communications. This is what private equity firms do; buy and sell, often with a fairly short window for the later. (See more about private equity here)
Earlier this year there were rumblings that Axel Springer might bid for ProSiebenSat1.Media, quickly denied by both companies. In 2005, the companies thought they had a deal but German competition authorities ground it to a halt. Since that episode, Herr Döphner has shown little interest in television assets.
Weighing the effects of disinformation campaigns in and around elections has become standard duty for policy researchers. Several years ago, these studies identified basic information about where it came from, how it became effective and the intended beneficiaries. Much has changed. Now disinformation is the preferred term since fake news was commandeered by promoters of fake news. George Orwell, from above, is laughing.
Disinformation has evolved, said a report from the Slovak Globsec Policy Institute (Globsec), the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI) (Czech Republic) and Hungary’s Political Capital. The report’s focus was the recently concluded European Parliament elections campaigns in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. "The aim of this research was to find out which political parties are being promoted on these channels, what narratives dominate in the context of the upcoming elections, and whether the observed narratives overlap across countries,” said Globsec analyst Miroslava Sawirisová, quoted by sme.sk (May 21).
Migration was the main theme for disinformation campaigns in the three countries. “EU dictatorship” and “undermining traditional values” were also in regular use. Across the three countries nationalist and populist political parties were portrayed positively in the identified disinformation web portals, pro-EU and left-leaning parties negatively. (See more about fake news here)
The researchers found that disinformation has become “a natural part of the information space,” said PSSI program manager Jonas Syrovatka to Czech public radio (May 27). "If someone was a disseminator of disinformation, it was the (Czech far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy party) SPD that made it part of the electoral tactics.” The report also noted the far-right, neo-Nazi Slovak People’s Party (L’SNS) and right-wing xenophobic Fidesz party in Hungary as benefitting from positive coverage from disinformation news sources.
“The most intensive disinformation campaign took place in Hungary,” said the report. More than two thousand (2178) articles on government controlled media “overlapped with their message and content” with “Kremlin-friendly propaganda pages,” quoted by atlatszo.hu (May 24).
Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, along with Poland, comprise the Visegrad Group of central European states. Poland was not included in the report. A separate report by the Oxford Internet Institute that studied fake news on social media in seven countries, including Poland, reported Polish news portal wyborcza.pl (May 21). From a sample of more than a half million social media posts collected in the first two weeks in April, the researchers found about 4% pushed fake news. In Poland, however, the percentage was 21%, more than the other six countries.
Television is solidly the preferred medium for news and information in Poland. A survey and report released this week by polling group Center for Public Opinion Research (Centrum Badania Opinii Społecznej - CBOS) estimates 58% of Poles interested in what’s going on in their country and the wider world turn to television, 27% to the internet, 9% to radio channels and last, and obviously least, 2% to the printed press. The caveat, not insignificant, is younger, better educated city dwellers consider the internet their “most important” news source.
The three main national television operators, according to the survey, are roughly tied in terms of perceived importance; 64% for State broadcaster TVPs three channels, 62% for Polsats two channels and 57% for TVNs two channels. TVP, Polsat and TVN each have dedicated all-news channels as well as news and public affairs programs on general interest channels. Polsat and TVN are privately owned and operated. (See more about media in Poland here)
CBOS also asked about credibility. “Polsat and Polsat News are clearly more often perceived as credible, TVN and TVN 24 somewhat more often as credible while for (State TV) critical assessments prevail.” More bluntly, 38% of those surveyed found TVP “not credible,” TVN channels 29% and Polsat channels 19%. (See more about TV news here)
Among online news portals, Interia, Wirtualna Polska (Virtual Poland), Onet and Gazeta.pl scored above the median on credibility, mostly operated by big publishers. Interia is principally owned and operated by Bauer Media, Onet.pl owned by publisher Ringier Axel Springer and Gazeta.pl operated by Agora Radio Group. Wirtualna Polska is an independent Polish online publisher.
Politically, television news programs and channels are divided left, right and center. TVP channels are favored by right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) followers. Those who choose TVN news programs are more likely centrist Civic Platform (PO) and rural centrist Polish People’s Party (PSL) followers. Anti-establishment Kukiz’15 movement and center-left Wiosna followers pay attention to news on Polsat channels.
“Almost all respondents (92%) believe that in order to form an opinion about current events, one should use various sources of information, and the vast majority (80%) claims that the message in various media about the same events is so different that it is not known where the truth is hidden,” said the report. The survey of 1064 adults was conducted in early April.
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