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MEDIA

Profits double for MTG

Swedish media group Modern Times Group AB (MTG) said its third-quarter pretax profit more than doubled to 647 million kronor from 262 million a year earlier helped by a 24 percent increase in sales, and a 241 million kronor non-cash accounting gain from the IPO of CTC Media Inc.

Published: 25 October 2006 10:01 CEST

The underlying pretax result was 406 million kronor, versus market expectations of 362 million kronor.

Sales increased to 2.280 billion kronor from 1.836 billion, reflecting continued healthy growth at the company’s Nordic pay-TV and Central and East European businesses, as well as the first contributions from newly acquired TV Prima in the Czech Republic and BET24.

Excluding the newly acquired businesses, sales increased 14 percent year-on-year.

Viasat Broadcasting, which comprises MTG’s principal television broadcasting businesses, generated a 26 percent increase in sales year-on-year to 1.857 billion kronor. Viasat reported growth for each of its broadcasting segments.

The total number of digital subscribers to the Viasat platform in the Nordic and Baltic countries grew by 17 percent year-on-year to 884,000 by the end of the period, and from 858,000 at the end of the second quarter.

Viasat’s total number of premium subscribers increased by 27 percent year-on-year to 755,000 at the end of the period, and were up 5 percent from the second quarter.

BUSINESS

Google News to return to Spain after seven-year spat

Google announced Wednesday the reopening of its news service in Spain next year after the country amended a law that imposed fees on aggregators such as the US tech giant for using publishers’ content.

Published: 4 November 2021 10:15 CET
Google News to return to Spain after seven-year spat
Google argues its news site drives readers to Spanish newspaper and magazine websites and thus helps them generate advertising revenue.Photo: Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP

The service closed in Spain in December 2014 after legislation passed requiring web platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay publishers to reproduce content from other websites, including links to their articles that describe a story’s content.

But on Tuesday the Spanish government approved a European Union copyright law that allows third-party online news platforms to negotiate directly with content providers regarding fees.

This means Google no longer has to pay a fee to Spain’s entire media industry and can instead negotiate fees with individual publishers.

Writing in a company blog post on Wednesday, Google Spain country manager Fuencisla Clemares welcomed the government move and announced that as a result “Google News will soon be available once again in Spain”.

“The new copyright law allows Spanish media outlets — big and small — to make their own decisions about how their content can be discovered and how they want to make money with that content,” she added.

“Over the coming months, we will be working with publishers to reach agreements which cover their rights under the new law.”

News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at the failure of Google particularly to pay them a cut of the millions it makes from ads displayed alongside news stories.

Google argues its news site drives readers to newspaper and magazine websites and thus helps them generate advertising revenue and find new subscribers.

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