Páll says state inaction drove Sýn from television news

Páll Magnússon, the first news editor of Stöð 2, says state inaction helped create the conditions that ended Sýn’s television news broadcasts, mbl.is reported. He said the decision marked a return to a state monopoly on television news.

Sýn’s final evening news bulletin, formerly broadcast by Stöð 2, aired on Monday. Unless circumstances change, Ríkisútvarpið will now produce and broadcast the country’s only television news service.

Magnússon, who now hosts the programme Sprengisand, said foreign social media platforms had taken more than half of Iceland’s advertising market. He added that the state took more than two billion annually from the part of the market that remained.

He said the state should instead have eased the pressure on Icelandic private media and made room for them when competition from foreign social media platforms increased.

According to Magnússon, private companies cannot be expected to continue operating services that no longer have a commercial or financial basis. He said Sýn’s private ownership was therefore not to blame for the end of its television news.

“Once the market had been structured like this, with RÚV’s presence on one hand and the entry of these foreign social media platforms on the other, the commercial basis for private companies to operate an open news bulletin simply collapsed,” he said.

Magnússon also said measures introduced by the government last year had achieved little. Those measures were intended to direct part of RÚV’s advertising revenue to private media.

“I do not know of these measures having made any difference whatsoever. It was simply a shoddy effort,” he said.