Hungary/ 4.2 Recent policy issues and debates  

4.2.5 Media pluralism and content diversity

The national competition authority in Hungary effectively applies anti-trust measures. A few buy-outs have been prevented in the media market in recent years. However, the majority of commercial media is owned by international capital.

The mission and structure of public television have been stipulated in the Act on Media (I/1996). Public TV broadcasts on three channels. The two nation-wide commercial channels are well ahead of the No.1 public channel in terms of number of viewers: their combined share of viewers was 45% in spring 2009, against the 10% of MTV (Magyar Televízió) - source: http://adattar.ortt.hu/agb/nezettseg/200904.

The long term licences of the two national commercial channels were awarded by way of public tenders: the proposals included certain promises of a cultural character. Due to the relative decrease in advertising budgets, the cultural content of these media has fallen considerably.

By 2006, 73% of households had access to, and 60.2% actually did link to, one or other cable network and thus had access to 57 channels in Hungarian - including the Hungarian versions of multinational chains, and in addition to international ones in their original languages. The situation is similar in the case of radio, with three national public service channels and several dozen national and local stations.

There are 38 daily newspapers with a combined print run of 1.49 million copies, about half of which are national and the other half local and regional papers. However, the largest print run belongs to the 39th paper, a free daily. The share of political papers continues to dwindle at the expense of tabloids. Each of these papers has an internet version and a number of widely read internet-only newspapers exist. 

The array of weekly, biweekly and monthly periodicals is on the increase; in 2007 there are 539 such papers and journals (against 386 in 2000). The National Cultural Fund provided grants to 242 of these periodicals in 2009 with a total of 741.4 million HUF.