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The media landscape in the Czech Republic

Since the end of communism many former state media and party newspapers have been privatised and numerous new titles have emerged, while other newspapers have disappeared from this small media market. After the division of Czechoslovakia, radio and television media were also separated.

Foto: Captain Chaos, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

With the exception of the former central organ of the Communist Party Pravo and the publishing house Economia, both of which are in Czech hands, today almost all large newspapers are foreign-owned. One of the publishers most active on the market is Vltava-Labe-Press, which is owned by Germany's Passauer Neue Press and itself owns more than 100 regional titles. Two of the country's largest quality newspapers, Mladá fronta Dnes and Lidové noviny, are published by a Czech subsidiary of the German publisher Rheinisch-Bergisch Verlagsgesellschaft. The tabloid Blesk, which belongs to Swiss publisher Ringier-Verlag, has a higher circulation than any of the quality newspapers. Almost all of the dailies run Internet portals, and most have separate editorial offices for their online and print versions. The news portal aktualne.cz, by contrast, publishes exclusively online.

Private television stations are the most successful audiovisual media, and have managed to oust the information programme of the public radio station Český rozhlas from the top viewer rating spot which it had enjoyed for years. In the same way the ratings of the highbrow and multi-faceted public television station Česká televise have dropped below those of the commercial TV Nova. New stations have emerged with the digitalisation of television, but their viewer levels are low. At the turn of 2000/2001 political forces attempted to acquire massive influence over Česká televise, but the move was successfully thwarted by striking television employees who were widely supported by the population.

Politically most of the quality newspapers and weeklies are liberal to conservative, while Pravo is close to the Social Democrats.

The blogger scene is still in the development process. Private blogs are rare, and most bloggers publish in the blog columns of the dailies' online editions.

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