Puchala: TASR Increased Productivity and Posted Profit in 2020

Bratislava, March 9 (TASR) – The News Agency of the Slovak Republic (TASR) released 132,858 multimedia news stories in the second half of 2020, up by 3,000 from the first half of 2020, and posted a profit of €98,242 for the whole of 2020, according to a report on TASR’s performance in the latter six months of last year presented to the parliamentary culture and media committee by TASR general director Vladimir Puchala on Tuesday.

In the second half of 2020, TASR released 75,468 text stories, 6,546 audio recordings, 48,150 photos and 2,694 videos. The dominant issue was the coronavirus pandemic.

“While TASR published 2,652 articles from the category of Health in 2019, the number of articles in this category rose to 14,149 in 2020,” said Puchala.

TASR’s overall expenditures in the second half of 2020 amounted to €2,564,074, with revenues reaching €2,596,800.

Apart from coronavirus, TASR also covered many other issues, including “initiatives of the police and National Crime Agency (NAKA), court trials, events in Parliament, the election of the prosecutor-general, economic assistance packages, the protests in Belarus, the US election, Brexit, events from the Slovak regions, the agenda of the EU’s bodies, the national football team’s qualification for the European Championships and the success of Alpine skier Petra Vlhova”, said Puchala.

He noted that TASR has expanded its regional news coverage to include live broadcasts from all corners of Slovakia. Towards the end of the year, TASR introduced a series called Winter 2020, promoting some of the lesser-known sites of the country suitable for winter tourism.

The agency in 2020 released more than 4,000 articles on the EU.

“TASR’s Export services in English and Hungarian, which have mainly embassies, investors and foreign news agencies as their customers, produced 7,664 stories in the second half, and more than 16,000 for the whole of 2020,” said Puchala.

TASR’s news website Teraz.sk maintained its record number of clicks from the first half of 2020 at 740,000 real users per month, according to the AIM monitor.

Meanwhile, Tablet TV has been rebranded as TASR TV in order to “boost the identity and synergy of the brand”, said Puchala, adding that its technology chain and quality of live events was increased.

As for innovations, TASR will soon launch a new editorial system, and it’s planning to introduce a project involving pictures taken by a drone.