News Corp increases stake in TV channel run by Polish monks

Posted At : 16 April 2007 14:45 | Posted By : Jonathan Barnard
Related Categories: Media owners, Television, Poland

The Financial Times today reports (not online) that News Corp has increased its stake in the small Polish television channel TV Puls from 25% to 35%. TV Puls was founded in 2001 as a 'family values' channel run by Franciscan monks. It never attracted much of an audience and went bankrupt in 2003. News Corp bought a 25% stake in June last year, and Polish regulators then allowed TV Puls to become a general-interest channel. It is still controlled by the monks.

News Corp has made a few strategic investments in Central Europe (it owns bTV, the main private television channel in Bulgaria, for example), where ad expenditure is growing very rapidly, especially compared to the developed markets. TV Puls only attracted 0.4% of viewing in 2005, however, and will require a lot of investment to turn into a mass-audience channel.

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