Norwegian Newspaper Market During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Norwegian media system has a variety of media outlets. However, historically, it was newspapers that were the most demanded and popular media among Norwegians. Newspaper became the basic assets of Norway's first media groups. In 2020, three media companies were represented on the newspaper market: Shibstead, Amedia, and Polaris Media. The research is an analytical study of the Norwegian newspaper market during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the study was to identify the main trends in the development of the Norwegian newspaper market during the pandemic. The results of the analysis Norwegian newspaper market in 2020 showed that, firstly, one of the main trends has become the concentration of media assets, which is increasing every year, and in 2020 its predominance was facilitated by changes in media regulation. Secondly, the pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of newspapers, which has affected the growth of digital circulation, and, as a result, has a beneficial effect on the revenues of media companies, as well as the government strategy for the transition to digital media. Third, advertising revenues of offline newspapers continued to decline, but none of newspapers closed, and operating profit of media companies increased compared to 2019. Thus, despite the restrictions associated with the pandemic, the trends in the development of the Norwegian newspaper market were associated mainly with the strengthening of trends that formed earlier, and not of those that were a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical base of the study was the reports for 2020 of the Norwegian Media Office, the Statistics Bureau of Norway, reports of S. Hirst on researching the Norwegian newspaper market, reports of the media companies Shibsted, Amedia, Polaris Media.