Lithuania – (E1) Media ownership concentration national level

In Lithuania, the legislation contains no special provisions on media concentration. The sector comes under the more general competition law, which forbids dominant positions, meaning over 40 % of a market.

As documented in previous studies (Balčytienė and Juraitė, 2009; česnavičius 2010), in the TV market, there is hard competition between two commercial television stations, TV3 and LnK, as their popularity among viewers is at similar rates. In the radio market, the situation is different and is in favor of the public service broadcaster, as its station LR1 is the leading one (it controls almost one fifth of the radio market). In general, one could conclude that the highest concentration exists in the television sector (57 %), which is followed by the newspaper market and radio market (see Table 3).

Table 3. Biggest audience share of the three media companies in different sectors (2008)

Even though the online media are rapidly strengthening their positions on the overall media market, competition there is leveling, but Delfi.lt still holds its strongest position among the Top 5 news portals (Table 4).

Table 4. Top 5 news portals (November 2010)

Source: Gemius Audience (www.audience.lt)

As to ownership type, except for TV3 commercial television which is owned by Modern Times group (Sweden), all mainstream media in Lithuania are owned by national owners (see Table 7). Being small and economically weak, the three Baltic States do not seem to be very interesting markets for foreign investors.