21.03.2023
The Czech News Agency's (CTK) current strategy and development head Jaroslav Kabele will replace Jiri Majstr as the agency's director general for the next six years, having been elected by the CTK Council today after a public hearing of candidates.
Five out of the CTK Council's seven members voted for Kabele. He will be appointed to the post at the next council meeting on April 17.
Majstr's term of office ends on June 10. He has headed CTK for 12 years.
A total of three candidates applied for the post of director general. In addition to Kabele, they were Tomas Pergler, editor of news site Seznam Zpravy and CTK's former foreign correspondent, and Jan Mrzena, producer and former chairman of the Czech Television (CT) Council.
Kabele wants to emphasise the independence and reliability of the agency. In addition to media clients, he wants to focus on non-media clients who can bring additional revenue to the agency.
"Currently, the agency's revenue ratio is 70 percent from media and 30 percent from non-media clients, but the media market no longer offers much potential for revenue growth. In Austria, for example, 60 percent of agency revenue is from non-media clients," Kabele noted.
One of the new projects should be a Presscentre for holding press conferences and other events directly in the CTK building. Kabele also plans to continue media training for PR professionals and journalism students and to expand CTK's range of PR services, which are strictly separate from news reporting.
CTK was established in 1918 as a state agency, and since 1993 it has been a public institution economically and financially separated from the state.
Supervision over CTK's activities is performed by the CTK Council, a seven-member body elected by the Chamber of Deputies. The agency employs 250 people.
This year, the agency expects to incur a loss of Kc4.8m due to a sharp rise in energy prices and inflation. In 2021, CTK reported a profit of Kc4.2m and expects to post a profit for 2022 as well. Total sales rose by 5.9 percent to Kc283m in 2021.