Battle of the dailies
As WBJ went to press, Axel Springer's new daily Dziennik Polska Europa Świat had not yet hit the newsstands, but its debut scheduled for April 18th had already caused a major stir in the media world.
The new title is Axel Springer's second daily in Poland. It launched the tabloid Fakt in 2003, which quickly overtook Agora's Gazeta Wyborcza as the top-selling daily with a circulation of around 500,000.
"We will be satisfied with average sales of 150,000 copies but we will certainly work hard to increase circulation," Florian Fels, CEO of Axel Springer Polska, told Rzeczpospolita. The company is also planning to sink over zł.100 million in a promotional campaign for Dziennik.
The price of the new daily was set at zł.1.50, which pushed Agora to cut the price of Gazeta Wyborcza to the same level from the previous zł.2.80. "This decision has been taken so that the readers are able to make a decision on the basis of the quality of the paper and not for financial reasons," reads an Agora communique.
"Agora has adopted a clear strategy aimed at stopping the development of Axel Springer's daily even before it appeared on the market, but this strategy is very costly for shareholders," DB Securities analyst Włodzimierz Giller told WBJ. Last Tuesday, after the date of Dziennik's debut had been set, the price of Agora's shares dropped to zł.44.20, its lowest level in two years.
Media analysts have been split on whether the German concern will succeed after Agora recently shut down its loss-making daily Nowy Dzień after just three months on the market.
"The press market in Poland is rather shallow and Axel's task will be very difficult. I'm not saying it can't succeed but it will require great financial outgoings. They spent some zł.70 million on the promotion of Fakt, which may well have the biggest readership, but took only five percent of the advertising market. It has already been announced that the promotion of the new daily will cost even more but it will take some time before the actual results are known," Giller concluded.
On the eve of Dziennik's debut, Norway's Orkla, the publisher of daily Rzeczpospolita, decided to send tender criteria to companies interested in buying part of their assets, whose value is estimated at EUR 1.1 (zł.4.33) billion.
