Brussels, 11/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - The current economic crisis does not appear to be visibly affecting private television companies and their pay-per-view market consolidation continues. Despite 0.3% negative growth of the EU's GDP in 2012, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory of the European Council in a new report, the 20 leading private TV companies in Europe achieved overall organic growth of 1.9%. ?
The eleven groups are mainly active in the pay-TV domain and are doing rather better than the groups that obtain their income mainly through advertising. With an overall organic growth rate of 3.7%, pay-TV groups performed better than the groups mainly financed by advertising whose overall organic revenues decreased by 1%. Groups that are mainly controlled by US shareholders (seven of them) achieved better results than European groups and accounted for 46.5% of total revenue of the 20 sample groups. (IL/transl.fl)