News, public affairs and cultural magazine programmes are awarded funding

The Media Council announced the winners of the fourth round of its tender procedure for supporting the production of news programmes, public affairs and cultural magazine programmes in its funding scheme for local and regional television stations. Twenty-five television tenders are given a total funding of HUF 127.25 million. TISZApART Televízió in Szeged, Csele TV in Mohács, Városi Televízió in Putnok, Trió TV Dunántúl in Sárvár and TV 10 in Budapest can spend the awarded funds on the production of public affairs magazines. News programmes can be produced by TV Szentendre, Győr+ Televízió, Miskolc Televízió, Tatai Televízió, Szomogy TV, DSTV Dunaújváros Televízió, Ceglédi TV and Pannon Televízió. Veszprém TV, Szombathelyi Televízió, Körös Televízió Szarvas, Makó Városi TV, Szarvas Televízió, Pécs TV, Ózdi Városi Televízió, Mezőtúri Városi Televízió, DSTV Dunaújváros Televízió, Kiskőrös Televízió and Tolnatáj Televízió successfully applied for funding for the making of cultural magazine programmes.

Decisions about radio tenders

The winner of the tender procedure published for the commercial use of the regional media service at Szeged 87.9 MHz is the sole tenderer Radio Plus Kft. The Council carried out the formal review of the tender offers submitted in the tender procedure for the community use of the regional radio media service at Budapest 92.9 MHz, and registered both tenderers, i.e. Közösségi Rádiózásért Egyesület and Klubrádió Zrt., for the tender.

Product placements continued to decrease due to pandemic

The Media Council approved the latest study examining product placements which analysed own programmes of the two national commercial television channels, RTL Klub and TV2, broadcast in the second half of 2021. In the six-month period 2,141 brands were advertised this way. Aldi was featured most often, 1,010 times, roughly as many as the four brands following it combined: Toyota (323), Electrolux (270), Hell Energy (231) and Champic (211).

A total of 12,715 such product placements were shown on RTL Klub and TV2 which is a 25% decrease compared to adverts registered in the same period in 2020 (17,675). While TV2 saw an increase of 13%, the proportion of this type of programmes fell by 39% on RTL Klub. A drop of more than 50% compared to 2019 can be observed on RTL Klub, whereas the increase was only 2% on TV2, and the overall decline was 37.8%. The main reason for this continues to be the changes in programme structure due to the coronavirus pandemic: it remained difficult to making own programmes and owing to the economic shifts the number of advertisers did not increased either.

Most advertisements (3,056) were connected to Reggeli, followed by Fókusz (1,051) and A konyhafőnök VIP (645), all RTL Klub programmes. The programme featuring the most product placements on TV2 was Mokka (with Mokkacino) (852) which acquired third place, while at the same time last year it was only at the eighth place. The biggest number of advertisements were connected to the food (2684), services (1686) and trade (1486) sectors.

The authority also examined virtual advertising in the study. In the second half of the year, a total of 550 such virtual advertisements were broadcast: 25 on RTL Klub and 525 on TV2. While on the former channel they only appeared in the programme entitled Fókusz, on the latter they appeared in more than thirteen programmes, most often in episodes of Mokka, Ninja Warrior and Séfek séfe. Despite their rarity and novelty, such advertising is easy for people to remember for now, but their reception is clearly negative. The whole study is available among the related content.

The full agenda of the weekly meetings of the Media Council is available on the council’s website together with the minutes of the sessions and all the resolutions – the latest documents are published after the necessary certification and administration processes.