TVN's surprise stumble

The announcement marks the first time since the company debuted on the WSE that it has posted a loss. Last year the company earned a net profit of zł.36 million in Q3.

"The third quarter is always the worst one ... Last year we also had additional revenue from the election campaign," the company's vice president, Karen Burgess, said. According to her, the consolidation of internet portal Onet.pl, investment expenditure, as well as the cost of a motivation program for employees contributed to the results. On the other hand, the company's revenue increased by 24 percent year-on-year in Q3, reaching zł.215 million.

The board promised that in the last quarter of the year it will achieve better revenues than expected. The station's viewership numbers show that it may be able to make good on its pledge. In October TVN had its best-ever viewership share of 19 percent, in comparison to 16.7 percent in October 2005.

"We are just a step behind TVP2," said TVN's president, Piotr Walter.

At  the same time, the station's owner, ITI Group, launched the first HDTV (High Definition TV) platform in Poland last month. As Krzysztof Kuśminek, the director of customer service at ITI Neovision, explained, the new technology offers great picture quality along with a new program offer, such as video on demand or a personal video recorder with a capacity of 250 GB. The customer can receive 30 movies what are sent to the hard disk of the decoder.