Four big groups (Impresa, Controlinvest, Cofina and MediaCapital) control most of the TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines and online news sites – see Table 9. The State has an important position too, as does the Catholic Church (leading radio station, regional newspapers). Among the most important news media, only the quality daily Público, the newcomer daily “i” and the sports daily A Bola do not belong to any of these media groups. The fact that the market is small and newsconsuming habits are not very high makes it difficult for single companies to invest in a news medium and survive.
There are three competitors in open access Television (the State – owning RTP1 and RTP2, one Portuguese media group – owning SIC, and a foreigner media group – the Spanish PRISA – presently owning TVI). All these companies also have paid-for channels, distributed through cable. There are also three major cable TV suppliers (the first one, Zon/TV Cabo, with a market share of 64.4 %).
There are four competitors in the national generalist daily press. One media group owns two (Jornal de Notícias and Diário de Notícias) of the five existing newspapers1 – plus one of the three sports dailies. There is now only one competitor in the market of generalist free dailies: they were three, but one closed and two others merged.
In the radio, there are more than three competitors at the national level, and particularly at the regional and local levels. As for Internet, there are also more than three competitors in the market (2008), although a company with the State as the shareholder with a “golden share” (PT-Portugal Telecom) has a prominent position.
Table 9. The main media groups in Portugal (2010)
| Groups Media | CONTROLINVESTE | IMPRESA | COFINA | MEDIA CAPITAL |
| Daily newspapers | – Jornal de Notícias – Diário de Notícias – O Jogo (sports) – Açoriano Or. (reg.) – DN Madeira (reg.) | – Correio da Manhã – Record (sports) – Jornal de Negócios (economy) – Destak (free) – Metro (free) | ||
| Weekly newspapers and news magazines | – J. Fundão (reg.) – Ocasião (advert.) | – Expresso (weekly) – Visão (newsmag.) | – Sol (weekly) – Sábado (newsmag.) | |
| Online news | (All newspapers, newsmagazines, tv and radio stations also have online editions) | (All newspapers, newsmagazines, tv and radio stations also have online editions) | (All newspapers, newsmagazines, tv and radio stations also have online editions) | (All newspapers, newsmagazines, tv and radio stations also have online editions) – PortugalDiario – MaisFutebol (sport) – Agência Financeira (economy) |
| TV (open access) | – SIC | – TVI | ||
| TV (cable) | SportsTV | – SIC Notícias – SIC Radical – SIC Mulher – SIC Internacional | – TVI 24 | |
| Radio | – TSF | – Rádio Comercial – Cidade FM – Rádio Clube Português | ||
| Others | – Advertising in sports events – Television transmission rights (football) | – News agency (part) – Printing – Newspaper distribution | – Newspaper distribution | – TV producing company (NBP) |
Source: Elaboration by the author, with data from ERC (2006) and ERC (2009).
A more strict law on media concentration was presented by the socialist government in 2008 and approved by the Parliament in 2009, but was not promulgated by the President of the Republic, with the argument that it was not urgent and that “a broader political consensus” on that matter should be reached.
