According to a report by the Macedonian Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, commercial broadcasters showed higher revenues compared to the previous year, except for the public broadcaster Macedonian Radio Television, which saw a revenue decrease of 3.22% compared to 2020.

“However, we cannot talk about any growth in the market, especially that a significant part of the revenues is due to the financial assistance that the Government of North Macedonia provided for covering the costs of the broadcasting license fee, transmission, subsidies for salary contributions, etc. to deal with the consequences of the pandemic”, announced the Agency.

The advertising revenues in the TV broadcast sector were 54% of the total revenues in 2021. Most of the income from advertising was generated by commercial televisions, 87%, and 10% by commercial radio stations.The share of the Macedonian Radio Television in advertising revenue is only 3%.

Revenues in the media industry were declining year by year since 2017, reaching a record low in 2020 with 38.7 m EUR. This is the first time in five years that the financial result of all commercial broadcasters is a profit of 0.9 m EUR / 56.51 m MKD.

TV Sitel had the highest overall revenues in 2021 with 7.3 m EUR, which is a drop of 20% compared to 2020, followed by Kanal 5 (an increase of 17% with 4.5 m EUR), Alsat-M TV (an increase of 31% with 3 m EUR) and TV Alfa (an increase of 30% with 2.5 m EUR).

As in the past five years, TV Sitel remains the most watched domestic TV station in North Macedonia, followed by Kanal 5. The total number of broadcasters has decreased by 18% since 2017.

On 29 September 2022, the Agency announced that it will reduce the 2023 television broadcasting license fee by 25% as financial assistance for all broadcasters.