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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This page considers the Modern Times Group and its spinoff
the Metro newspaper chain.
It covers -
introduction
Modern Times Group (MTG) traces its origins to the Kinnevik
investment conglomerate, a counterpart of the extended
Wallenberg interests.
Kinnevik was established in 1936 as an investment company,
subsequently expanding into abrasives and steel manufacture,
milling machines, forestry, pulp & paper and telecommunications.
It currently centres on operating companies such as farming
company MSLA and cartonboard and paper producer Korsnäs
AB, along with major stakes in groups such as MTG.
Rationalisation of Kinnevik over the past two decades
saw establishment of seven publicly listed companies and
that embrace the fixed line and mobile telecommunications,
free-to-air and pay-television and radio broadcasting,
content production, publishing, paper & packaging,
financial services, technology and services.
MTG has operations in over 30 countries, with principal
broadcasting businesses in Scandinavia, the Baltic States,
Hungary and Russia in competition with groups such as
Sanoma WSOY and Bonnier.
MTG is the largest free-to-air and pay-tv operator in
the Nordic and Baltic regions and the largest commercial
radio operator in Northern Europe.
MTG also operates seven radio networks in five countries.
It is active in home shopping and e-commerce.
MTG formerly included the Metro newspaper chain.
the group
Modern Times Group, MTG AB currently has four business
areas:
- Viasat
Broadcasting (free-to-air, pay-TV broadcasting and teletext
operations in 16 countries)
- Radio
(seven national networks or local stations in six countries)
- TV-Shop
(home shopping and logistics)
- Modern
Studios (content production and distribution)
Metro
The Luxembourg-based Metro chain has free papers in the
Americas, Asia and Europe. It does not currently have
an Australian presence, although colonisation is recurrently
mooted.
MTG's Metro operations were spun off to shareholders in
2000. At that time there were editions in Stockholm, Gothenburg,
Malmö, Helsinki, Prague, Budapest, the Netherlands,
Newcastle, Zurich, Santiago de Chile and Philadelphia.
As of late 2004 the Metro group published 40 free daily
Metro editions in 61 major cities in 16 countries
in 15 languages across Europe, North & South America
and East Asia. The group claims that Metro's advertising
sales had grown at a compound annual rate of 47% since
the launch of the first edition in 1995. The group continued
to expand after 2004, launching titles in Brazil and other
locations.
It faces competition from independents, from established
papers such as the New York Daily News, Chicago
Tribune , London Daily
Mail and Melbourne Age
(which have pre-emptively launched free commuter papers),
and from Schibsted (with editions
of its 20 Minutes free daily in Bern, Basle,
Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris).
The Metro editions are distributed in "high-traffic
commuter zones or in public transport networks from a
combination of self-service racks and by hand distributors
on weekdays". Distribution points are typically located
either at public transport nodes, office buildings, retail
outlets and in other high-density population areas such
as college campuses. Weekend editions are published in
Stockholm and Holland on Saturdays.
The group claims that
All
Metro editions carry headline local, national
and international news in a standardized and accessible
format and design, which enables commuters to read the
newspaper during a typical journey time of less than
twenty minutes. Metro's editorial content is
also free from bias and focuses on giving readers the
news they need at the time they read, rather than comment
or views.
In
practice the news coverage is thin. One Metro executive
in 2004 commented that
We're
more demographically targeted than your typical newspaper.
Our target is readers 18-34. We're the NIE [Newspaper
in Education] for 20-year-olds. We removed all the obstacles
to reading a newspaper.
Media analyst John Morton, asked what's the editorial
quality of free newspapers, commented
I
would say, sparse and sparser. The Metro is
the sparser one. You know, a major story there would
be three paragraphs long. A lot of it is picked up from
wire services, they do very little original reporting.
Jack Shafer more tartly commented
that
to
paraphrase Frank Zappa, these dumbed-down publications
are journalism by people who can't write for people
who won't read. But obsessing over the free dailies'
editorial deficiencies misses the point that they're
an advertising solution to the problem of declining
circulation, having more to do with business than journalism.
As the adage goes, a newspaper is an advertisement with
a news story on its back side. No matter how good the
newspaper, if it doesn't attract advertisers—which
account for 80 percent of a big daily's revenue—it
won't survive.
The
corporate site is here.
City AM's largest single investor is Blue Bull, the investment
vehicle of Boudewijn Poelmann, chair of the Dutch lotteryand
one of the six co-founders of Dutch publisher Independent
Media. Independent Media was founded in 1992 and published
the Moscow Times and Russian language versions
of glossy magazines such as Cosmopolitan until
early 2005.
studies
There have been no major English-language studies of the
Modern Times, Kinnevik and Metro groups. Insights about
free commuter papers are provided in Piet Bakker's Free
Daily Newspapers - Business Models & Strategies
(PDF)
and his excellent Free Newspaper research
site.
For MTG and Kinnevik's involvement in broadcasting see
in particular Lena Ewertsson's 2001 dissertation The
Triumph of Technology Over Politics? Reconstructing Television
Systems: The Example of Sweden (PDF).
 next
page (MTG and Metro holdings)
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