Index.hu reports that Tuesday (June 14) is the very last day Metropol newspaper is released. Based on the information of Népszabadság, the site writes that Károly Fonyó, owner of Metropol, made the decision to shut down the newspaper because of financial factors.
The information ending the publication of Metropol was confirmed by director Péter Hivatal. He also told that further information will be shared by the company’s liquidator. It is said that Fonyó decided to do so in order to avoid debts, as he aimed to pay off all of his employees and suppliers.
However, Index writes that, according to Népszabadság, the real reason of ending the daily newspaper is that none of the business plans made for this year could operate profitably, moreover, they had already made a deficit of 233 million HUF last year.
Also, recently Árpád Habony started a free newspaper called Lokál, which became rival to Metropol and won the support of the government as well: it has been full of government advertisements, the Szerencsejáték Zrt., for example, spends nearly 500 million HUF on the Lokál daily and weekly newspapers. These are given to people at crowded points in the city, as well.
Furthermore, neither BKV nor MÁV (Budapest Public Transportation and Hungarian State Railways) extended their contracts with Metropol. Besides, there is no public procurement by BKV for the contract with them, which, according to Index.hu, is quite contradictory, for they did not renew the contract with Metropol partially because of the new tender that would have been required.
Earlier, Fonyó said that they would keep on operating until the elections in 2018, while Hivatal claimed that Lokál would belong to the tabloid press, hence it would be the rival of Blikk just as much as of Metropol.
Sadly then, Metropol is leaving the Hungarian market of media after 18 years. Its newspapers were printed 330 thousand times and spread at public places of Budapest, in all of the county towns and in dozens of other towns.
Photo: facebook.com/Metropol.hu
Copy editor: bm
Source: index.hu
