Bulgaria Tycoon Shuts down News Channel Re:TV over Crisis, Admits Failure

The Re:TV after the evening news anchors announced that the channel's program would be terminated at 10 pm Friday, this is the final screen message.

The Bulgarian private news TV channel Re:TV is terminating its broadcast Friday night as it is being shut down by its owners of the economic crisis.

Bulgarian millionaire businessman Ivo Prokopiev and his associates at the Civic Media Foundation running Re:TV, Svetoslav Bozhilov and Ivan Krastev, have announced the shutdown of the TV. Re:TV was launched almost two years ago.

The owners distributed the message to the media employees thanking everybody who has worked for Re:TV. Their public statement reads:

“With the creation of this TV we wanted to demonstrate several things – that there could be transparent property and funding of media in Bulgaria, that the Bulgarian society also has a place for serious and independent TV journalism. We failed.

The advertising market did not support the need for the realization of such a TV project. BGN 9 M from donations have been invested into the Civic Media Foundation [running Re:TV] but the dire financial crisis has made the funding of the TV impossible any more.

The short existence of Re:TV on the TV market showed something else as well. There are huge barriers to the entering of new actors, and as a result there is no competition and diversity of opinion. The regulators and the political elite have systematically through the years supported the over-concentration of the TV market. The shattering of this vicious model is key for the Bulgarian society and the public debate but it has turned out to be an impossible task for Re:TV.

We have made the harsh decision to shut down the TV. We believe that it is better than letting a successful team and TV product with a good reputation become dependent on a potentially suspicious funding in the future.”

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