Four big groups (Impresa, Global Media, Cofina, and MediaCapital) control a large share of television and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and online news sites (see Table 9). The state has an important position too, as does the Catholic Church. The fact that the market is small and news-consuming habits are not very high makes it more difficult for single companies to invest in a news medium and survive.
There are three competitors in open access television: the State owns RTP1, RTP2, and RTP3, one Portuguese media group owns SIC, and a foreigner media group, the Spanish PRISA, presently owns TVI. All these companies also have paid-for channels, distributed through cable, devoted to news and information 24 hours a day. The Cofina group also owns a news channel distributed through cable – the popular CMTV.
[supsystic-tables id=76]
There are three major cable television suppliers: NOS (40.1% market share), MEO (39.6%), Vodafone (16.3%), and a smaller one, NOWO/MásMóvil (3.9%) (ANACOM, 2020a).
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 newspapers – plus one of the three sports dailies. There is now only one competitor in the market of generalist free dailies (Destak), but these newspapers have virtually disappeared from the Portuguese media landscape anyway.
In radio, there are more than three competitors at the national level, and many more at the regional and local levels. As for Internet, there are also three major competitors in the market, with the same operating cable, since virtually all Internet clients are also cable television and mobile phone consumers, subscribing to the popular triple-play or fourth-play packages.
In 2018, Impresa group sold all its magazines to a new group (Trust in News) and Cofina group tried to buy Media Capital group, owner of the free-to-air television channel TVI and the cable TVI24, which raised fears of excessive concentration, but the deal failed. Presently, a new businessman with interests mostly in the area of tourism bought a share of 30 per cent of TVI, and there are rumours (still not confirmed) that he will buy the majority of the shares and take over the company. The Spanish group PRISA has repeatedly showed its desire to sell their participation in the Portuguese television sector.
Apart from these groups, there are, on the national level, the following relevant news media:
- national television channels (RTP1, RTP2, RTP3, ARTV) and national radio stations (Antena1, Antena 2, Antena 3) belonging to the state / Public Broadcasting Service (PBS);
- the leading national radio group (Rádio Renascença), owned by the Catholic Church;
- the most influential daily newspaper (Público), owned by an industrial group (Sonae);
- the most influential online-only news medium (Observador – site & radio), owned by a number of private investors (it was launched in 2014);
- the leading sports daily (A Bola), owned by private investors;
- one national daily (i Informação) and one national weekly (Sol), owned by a non-aligned private investor;
- and the first news magazine (Visão), owned by a small media group (Trust in News).
Some attempts were made in the past to pass a law against media concentration, but they never succeeded, with the argument that it was not an urgent problem and that “a broader political consensus” on that matter should be reached. In spite of this, whenever a group or a company wants to buy a news outlet, they must have the approval of the Regulatory Entity for the Media (ERC) and of the Competition Authority.
In 2015, the so-called transparency law for the media was approved, forcing every media outlet to regularly provide information about their owners, major shareholders, financial results, and so on (see further information on this in Indicator C3 – Transparency of data on leading news media).
