Introduction
The value of the Finnish mass media market in 2015 was around €3.7bn, a decrease of roughly 3 percent from the previous year.
The revenue of electronic media decreased by 1.5 percent. In this millennium, the share of the media market held by electronic media has nearly doubled from one fifth to almost 40 percent. The growth comes from Internet advertising and particularly television business. Publishing (newspapers, free papers, magazines and periodicals, and books) decreased by three percent from the previous year. In this millennium, publishing has slipped from more than 70 percent to 57 percent of the media market. The biggest drop was for magazines and periodicals: More than eight percent from the year before.
Electronic media (television, radio and the Internet advertising) had the second biggest share of the media market with 37.8 percent. Recorded media (phonograms, videos and cinemas) had a share of 5.7 percent.
Some media sectors grew in 2015: cinemas (+26 percent), Internet advertising (+7 percent), book sales (+4 percent) and commercial radio (+4 percent). In the recording market, the sales of video recordings fell further. Cinema had a good year with strong ticket sales and increased cinema advertising.
Contrary to previous years, the figures for mass media market in 2015 do not include direct mail and the numbers for direct mail were removed from previous years as well. In this millennium, the mass media market share of direct mail has decreased from around nine percent in 2000 to about five percent in 2014.
According to Kantar TNS, in 2016 advertising decreased nine percent in magazines, five percent in newspapers and one percent in TV, but increased three percent in radio and 13 percent online excluding search. Media advertising has been on a decline since spring 2012.
Changes in advertising volume affect the sales and profits of media companies. Advertising revenue is influenced, for example, by the number of newspapers and magazines published. A recession affects newspaper and magazine advertising more rapidly than advertising on TV.
The Finnish mass media is characterised by a dual system of commercial print and broadcasting media and by a strong public service broadcasting media. The largest sector of the print media by market volume consists of subscribed-to newspapers at national, regional and local levels and of free newspapers. The great majority of newspaper-like publications are non-affiliated independent papers. Party newspapers are a curiosity at a few percents of the total. Periodicals and books are the second largest sector.
National public service Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) with its television and radio operations is the biggest operator of broadcasting media. Laws and decrees laid by the parliament regulate its operations. Since 2013, its operations have been financed by the public broadcasting tax.