Economic downturn appears to have had little effect on advertising

According to Agora Monitoring, the newspaper advertising market expanded by 4.5% in the first quarter of 2003 in comparison to the same period last yea r. According to AGB, revenues of television broadcasters jumped by over 10%, while CR Media estimated that radio broadcasters received 9.9% more. This d ata, however, does not include discounts given by media companies to their clients. "We think that the market might have increased by 2% in real terms, but it is hard to estimate this number due to constant changes in the value of discounts," said general director of Starcom media house Jakub Benke. Ac cording to Agora Monitoring, revenues of Gazeta Wyborcza dropped by 9% in t he first quarter of 2003, which can be attributed to the Rywin scandal. Exp erts think that this was also due to outflow of money to television broadca sters. The second largest daily Rzeczpospolita, recorded a 4% increase in a dvertising revenues. (Parkiet, p. 6) M.M.