“We have been negotiating the sale of the television channel for the past two months. We are seriously ready for that and have three to four solid candidates,” Flemming Lindeloev, Achemos Grupė chairman, told the news portal vz.lt.
Arūnas Laurinaitis, Achemos Grupė president, said that the concern was looking for a strategic partner that would contribute to the development of the TV channel or for a buyer. However, the television channel had not yet been sold and no deals would be concluded by the New Year, he said.
Laurinaitis told vz.lt that the group wanted to dissociate itself from businesses that were related with or could influence the politics since “it interferes with business”. However, the Radiocentras group would not be sold because it ran music radio stations and the Lietuvos Žinios daily would be kept since its influence was too small, he said.
According to data made available by the market researcher TNS LT, BTV ranked fourth in Lithuania in terms of audience share in October. The channel had a daily reach of 25.5 percent and a 5.5 percent audience share that month. In 2011, its average audience share made up 5.3 percent.
Baltijos TV, the BTV broadcaster, last year saw its audited losses widen 3.3 times, year-on-year, to 7.969 million litas (EUR 2.3m). Its revenues contracted by 36 percent, to 6.048 million litas.
Achemos Grupė owns 100 percent of shares in Baltijos TV. The group also owns the Lietuvos Žinios daily, and commercial radio stations Radiocentras, Relax FM, Zip FM, Rock FM, Russkoye Radio.
