ABSTRACT
The old command press of communism looks so strange right now, like part of a tired ghost story, because the media landscape of Central and Eastern Europe is being remade. The collapse of the ruling party’s dominance over the media was a clear sign of the decline of the old regime. In autumn of 1988 in Hungary, a few independent weeklies and fortnightlies were licensed as a political concession to the opposition forces. Hungary’s economy, like the other command economies of the region, suffered from a built-in shortage of capital. The foreign investors typically promised in writing to fulfill certain conditions for editorial staff members, who felt threatened by the emerging political regime and calls for purges at state publishers. The magazine market in Hungary is highly concentrated and more segmented than the newspaper market. The share of the largest publisher, Axel Springer-Budapest Ltd., might amount to one-third of total sales turnover.
