The year 2019: economic collapse of the media of Azerbaijan continues

Television, radio, print and online media is not separated. In the current report, television and radio are combined under the heading of television and radio, and telecommunications facilities are combined with postal orders, periodicals with written notices, print and audiovisual products. There is not even data on the media in general. Mass media are united in the section “mass events”.

This innovation, which is not found in any other country in the world, does not allow analyzing the state of each sphere of the media. The actions of the State Statistics Committee actually veiled the real state of the media advertising market in Azerbaijan, which has been consistently difficult for 20 years.  That is why we cannot compare the data for 2018 and 2019, and give a detailed picture on the state of the domestic media advertising market.

According to the State Statistics Committee, in 2019, the media and organizers of public events received 11 million 731.7 thousand manats (6.9 million euros) from the distribution of advertising. In 2018, advertising revenues only for the Azerbaijani media amounted to 7 million 747.2 thousand manats (4.03 million euros). As always, most of all earned from advertising the TV and radio company - 7 688.9 thousand manats ($ 4.5 million); over the year, their income increased by only 5.7%.

Advertising revenues of periodicals, together with written notifications, print and audiovisual products, amounted to 978.2 thousand manats ($ 575.4 thousand). In 2018, the column for print media included 1 thousand manats of advertising money.
We cannot say how much advertising was generated by online media. They are now grouped under the heading “telecommunications, written notices and mailings”. This hybrid line accounts for 1 million manats. Online media revenues in 2018 were indicated at 474.5 thousand manats ($ 279 thousand).

However, if to cut off from the total income of the media - 11 million 731.7 thousand manats (6.9 million euros) revenues from areas not included in the media, then we can state that in general, the media accounted for about the same as in 2018 - 7.5 million manats, and maybe even less. Even with such a veiled form of stating the volume of the media advertising market, it is clear that the situation has not improved at all, and remains catastrophic.

Unprecedentedly low share of media advertising in the GDP

In 2019, Azerbaijan's GDP amounted to 81.7 billion manats ($ 48 billion). The share of media advertising in the GDP was 0.009% at an international rate of 1% of GDP. Advertising revenue per capita - 0.012 manat ($ 0.0071).

Ideally, the market for domestic media advertising would have to be not 7.5 million manats, but a hundred times more. This is possible only if the country is democratic and the economy is open. With the current policy of suppressing and controlling the press, one should not expect radical changes in the advertising market. The poverty and misery of the media makes them dependent on the government, which is the strategic goal of the regime.

Legal and illegal subsidies

Practically the media are subsidized by the state. However, illegal subsidies are by many times higher than legal ones. It is unambiguous that the media of Azerbaijan, including 24 TV and radio companies, hundreds of media sites, newspapers, and magazines cannot exist on advertising 7.5 million manats and legal aid worth several million manats.  The talk is about tens of millions of manats of illegal financing.

For example, there are 24 TV and radio companies in Azerbaijan; 12 of them are nationwide. On average, one TV and radio company accounted for 320.4 thousand manats in 2019. This is much less than the cost of maintaining TV requires. More than 50 million manats were allocated to two TV channels - AzTV and OTV, financed from the state budget in 2019. In 2019, the National Council of TV and Radio Broadcasting allocated a one-time financial assistance amounting 600,000 manats ($352,900) to each of the five private nationwide TV and radio broadcasting companies - Lider, Xazar, ATV, ARB 24 and Space. More than 4 thousand media outlets are registered in the country, according to the government, but 10% of them actually work.

Officially, in 2018, eighteen newspapers received state support through the Fund for Mass Media State Support under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Fund's budget was 4.08 million manats (2.4 million euros). Of these, only 1/3 went to direct financing of these newspapers, the names of some of them are completely unknown to the reader. Even if we assume, based on the data of the State Statistics Committee, that the revenues of print and online media amounted to 1 million, it turns out that on average 2.5 thousand manats are allocated to one out of four hundred media outlets per year.

It can be predicted that the current course of economic dependence of the media on the government will continue, since it is not interested in providing economic freedom to the press, which automatically leads to creative freedom and the implementation of the function of public control as the so-called Fourth Power.

Because of strong economic decline in 2020 stated by international financial agencies, it is possible to predict a further deterioration in the economic situation of the media, an increase in its dependence on the state, as well as a continued growth of the influence of social networks and private initiatives on public opinion, which needs independent information.