Inforadio cuts staff, changes format
By : Anna Kocinska
Inforadio, broadcaster of the supra-regional radio station Tok FM, has laid off an unspe-cified number of hosts and news editors in a bid to slash expenses, a source told the Business Journal last week.
Poland's only news and talk radio station will also trim its daily live programming schedule from over 15 to nine hours and begin playing folk music during the night, the source said. While three of Tok FM's hosts Waldemar Oginski, Maria Czarnecka and Anna Laszuk are expected to keep their jobs, it's uncertain whether Anna Maruszeczko, one of the station's main personalities and a host at private television station TVN,will stay.
"(The layoffs) are necessary simply because (Tok FM's) costs are extremely high," said Jerzy Baczynski, editor in chief of Polityka, a weekly news magazine published by Polityka Spoldzielnia Pracy, a shareholder in Tok FM. "It's one of the most expensive radio stations in Poland. But we don't want to take it off the air. As long as we can defend this format (news and talk radio) we will."
According to media insiders, Inforadio urgently needs a cash-rich investor because GWR, the British radio broadcaster and subsidiary of Central European Broadcasting, which has a 33% stake in the station, has cut off financing. Inforadio's other shareholders include INFOR and Agora, publisher of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. While Agora holds some 40% of Inforadio, the media giant considers its stake too small to merit investing more money in the station. Also, in May Agora had been toying with idea of selling its stake. According to the law, entities that acquired stock in a media company after the company received its broadcasting license cannot hold more than 49%, a regulation Agora has tried in vain to change by applying to the National Television and Radio Council (KRRiTV) to be placed on the list of original shareholders.
Meanwhile, Polityka, INFOR and GWR are Inforadio's only original shareholders. But according to Polityka's Baczynski, Agora may apply again to the KRRiTV. "If this radio station is to survive we need cooperation from the KRRiTV," he said. He also said that talks with ITI Holdings, owner of TVN, which has expressed interest in purchasing stock in Inforadio, may not be over. "They didn't sign the agreement in July as we had expected but I'm not ruling out the deal, Baczynski said. "(Inforadio's shareholders and ITI) are in touch."
The legal woes of tannery-turned-media group 4Media continue. Warsaw-based legal firm Drzewiecki, Tomaszek & Wspolnicy (DT&W), one of 4Media's creditors, said last week it still plans to auction off the domain of Internet portal Ahoj.pl, which the media group purchased in March.
While the domain had been scheduled to be auctioned off in early July, according to Igor Ostrowski, a partner at DT&W, the auction was called off because the legal firm had instead started negotiations with 4Media. "But their offer was unacceptable, our talks led nowhere, and we are preparing for the auction to take place after the summer holiday," Ostrowski said. "In my opinion, we'll be able to get more money back this way than through negotiations."
4Media's problems with creditors started immediately after the group purchased the financially troubled The Mother.Ship Poland (TSMP), owner of Ahoj.pl, in March. At that time 4Media said it would cover TSMP's debts. By May, however, DT&W had lost confidence in 4Media's commitment to pay the zl. 500,000 owed by TSMP and ordered the seizure of the Ahoj.pl domain.
DT&W is not the only creditor of 4Media that is running out of patience. 4Media still owes zl. 950,000 (plus interest and legal fees) to media house OMD Poland. As a result of a deal worked out earlier this year, the media group said it would repay the debt by July 23 but failed to do so. Now OMD is saying that a repo agency will look to recoup its losses by collecting on Druk Serwisu and Regionalne Rozglosnie Radiowe, 4Media's subsidiaries that guaranteed the debt repayment.
Polityka weekly plans to launch a new version of Forum magazine this fall. The financially troubled Forum, bought by Polityka, has been a fixture on Polish newsstands for 35 years, featuring reprints of stories from a number of international papers.
"We plan to modernize it," said Jerzy Baczynski, editor in chief of Polityka. "It will have a colorful layout but it won't be a repetition of the existing weeklies." Forum's team of up to 30 translators and journalists, Baczynski said, will look for "interesting" stories not only in the most famous newspapers and weeklies, such as the Financial Times, The Economist, Der Spiegel or Le Monde, but also from post-Soviet republics and the Middle East. "We are thinking about starting with a circulation of 100,000 and we will spend more than zl. 1 million ($238,000) on promotion," he added.
