Most important condition for commercial television station to prosper is free market economy as main source of income for commercial television is advertising; competition in needed in order to need advertising. That condition was present in Latvia only starting from 1991 onwards, therefore all commercial television stations operating in Latvia are not older than ten years. There have been several commercial channels operating in Latvia, however, as a serious start for commercial television in Latvia can be considered launching of Latvian Independent Television (LNT) in 1996 and TV3 Latvia in 1999. TV3 Latvia was operating already before 1996, for short period of time, but went bankrupt, unfortunately now it is not possible to find any evidence of that. Both channels are national channels and have launched subchannels, LNT’s TV5 is a Riga city channel and had “reality show channel” reputation from the launch, however presently this image is not so strong any more as there are no locally produced reality shows and other channels are broadcasting purchased reality shows as well. TV5 through cable is available in the whole territory of Latvia, but as a terrestrial channel its reach is 70 km around Riga.
TV3’s subchannel is 3+ and it is available in the whole territory of Latvia through cable. It is meant for Russian audience and basically is compilation of PBK’s and NTV’s most successful programs; it also broadcasts the same films as TV3 Latvia only in Russian language. Another commercial channel operating in Latvia is PBK, it is available through cable and mainly retransmitting OPT programming, however, news are produced in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania separately.
From 1996 to 1999 when TV3 Latvia was established LNT actually did not have real competitor as both state channels had different aims and goals, different audiences, therefore also different programming, as LNT served general interest of larger audience it has been most watched channel in Latvia for a long time, however with TV3 Latvia entering the market things have changed. According to TNS data in 2000 share of TV3 Latvia was 9.1% and it was third channel after LNT with 26.9% and LTV1 with 14.2%. In 2003 LNT still had the lead with share of 24%, but TV3 was already second with almost twice as big share than in 2000, in 2003 it was 16.1% leaving LTV1 third with 13.8% of share. In 2004 situation in rankings was the same – LNT still had the lead with 22% of the share, LTV1 with 13.8%, exactly the same as a year before, and TV3 with 17.2% of the share. …
