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The media landscape in Bulgaria

With the democratic revolution of 1989 Bulgaria's media landscape underwent a major upheaval. The strong demand for independent journalism after decades of communist repression of media freedom (1944-1989) led to the founding of numerous print media. While the first independent dailies 24 Chasa and Trud, which have belonged to the German WAZ media group since 1997, still have high circulation figures, the daily Duma, the successor of the former communist press, leads a shadow existence nowadays.

Sofia
Foto: Boby Dimitrov, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

In line with the Bulgarians' growing boredom with politics a number of tabloids have appeared on the market. The weekly Weekend, which has the highest circulation, appeals to a broad public with entertaining information that has been slightly reworked to make it more appealing. The daily Dnevnik and the weekly Kapital, on the other hand, are considered quality papers. Both target an educated and politically interested readership and focus more than other media on the interactive expansion of their online presences.

Bulgaria lies far behind the EU average on the international press freedom ranking list. The reasons for this are the frequent attacks against journalists and the media's strong dependency on political and business circles. The lack of a press law hampers the monitoring of newspaper publishers' financing sources, as well as the objective disclosure of their owners. This gives rise to constant speculation. In this context independent blogs are gaining importance.

While far tougher regulation of electronic media ensured greater transparency, it slowed down the allocation of broadcasting frequencies to private television and radio broadcasters. Today, foreign media groups dominate the Bulgarian television market with their national private channels bTV and Nova Televizija. Their introduction of modern entertainment formats has enabled them to break the public broadcasters' monopoly over television. The only public television channel, BNT1, nonetheless continues to strongly influence public opinion. The Bulgarian national radio broadcaster and the private broadcaster Darik Radio are the only national broadcasters where more transmission time is dedicated to spoken words than to music.

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