Beginning a new day
Agora's new daily newspaper, Nowy Dzien (New Day), hit the shelves at the beginning of the week, just a month after the company admitted it existed.
In October, Agora's CEO, Wanda Rapaczyński, announced that the media group was preparing to launch a new daily, which could have a short-term adverse effect on its financial results. However, Agora's excellent Q3 figures mean the company is getting off on the right foot with its new title.
The media group's revenues from the first three quarters of 2005 soared to zł.873 million, a 20.6 percent increase in comparison with the same period in 2004. Its net profit reached zł.117 million, quadrupling 2004's zł.28.2 million.
The group's advertising revenues also rose by 12 percent. Amongst its top performers was AMS - Agora's subsidiary specializing in outdoor advertising - which benefited from higher-than-expected demand from political parties for their electoral campaigns, and thus increased its share of the market to 29 percent.
The circulation of Agora's flagship national daily Gazeta Wyborcza rose by 5.3 percent and ad sales for Metro, the free-of-charge national newspaper, tripled when compared with the same period last year. At the same time, Fakt, Axel Springer's tabloid and Gazeta Wyborcza's main competitor, declined in popularity selling seven percent fewer copies. These figures seem to confirm the Association for the Control of Press Distribution's (ZKDP) data, which showed a drop in tabloid sales for the first three quarters of 2005 year-on-year and an increase in the readership of opinion and quality papers.
This trend could prove particularly beneficial to Agora as its new national daily will be aimed at the more 'ambitious reader'. "In a nutshell, the formula of our new daily may be summarized as a mid-market newspaper. It is a newspaper for all Poles who seek more ambitious content than that offered by tabloids or the yellow press. It is a newspaper which also offers entertainment for the whole family," said Zbigniew Bąk, vice-president of Agora's management board.
The new title costs zł.1 per copy, while its Thursday edition, with a TV guide insert, will cost zł.1.50, compared to zł.1.20 for its main rival, Fakt.
