Well although I have no way of knowing the audience numbers for Romanian TV I have come across an organization which tracks sales for printed publications. In their report for 2011 (the most recent available) you can see that Click! easily comes in first place with over 166,000 daily readers.
In comparison, the number one “hard news” paper (for much more of my take on the print media, see here) is Romania Libera, with only 39,000 daily readers. According to this report these numbers come from multiplying statistics from a survey of over 12,000 people.
So there you go, assuming these numbers are correct then four times as many Romanians read the gossip tabloid as do hard news, which I guess sort of confirms what I observed a year ago. Looks like I was wrong and Alison Mutler was right, as much as that pains me to say it. I truly am in the wrong line of work, writing all these real articles instead of fucking around like more popular bloggers or pimping articles to the AP after reading Click!.
Sigh…
All Things Romania 
salve Sam. in partea de jos a paginii este o optiune la care ii spune ‘follow’. am incercat sa subcriu ca sa primesc mesaj cand ai un post nou dar a scris ca adresa de e-mail pe care am pus-o nu e valida. te asigur ca e valida, poate sti cum se poate rezolva. Merci,
Radu.
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Dear Sam, please continue to write “real articles” for those of us who don’t like Click!.
@ Aniela: Dear Madame, who cares how feminine or not is Alison Mutler. Every time I hear the name Mutler all I can think of is Dastardly and Mutley :)
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Dastardly and Mutley indeed! Made my day.
Anyway, IIRC the figures presented by BRAT (what a wonderfully thought-out name btw) are obtained by taking the number of sold units and multiplying it with a factor (x14, last time I heard) – on the idea that one newspaper is read by more than one person.
This is ofc blatant bullshit, seeing that people don’t really share newspapers (not with 14 others) and most importantly, very few actually read from page to page. Back in the ’90s some newspapers used to actually print hunders of thousands of copies, and sell them all. I suppose today’s figures for “coverage” are simply made-up so they look good for the advertisers.
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oy, could you please edit the above comment? didn’t notice the email and name fields are in reverse order :)
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Ha! I would think you prefer quality readers instead of the mass of poor educated which I like to call zombies! I know a few people who read your blog and me not being a good writer I will include myself into that group. Thank you for your insight! ;) I will treasure your blog for ever and ever… No! Really : Thank you ! ;)
PS: Animal planet, Discovery channels and Net Geo are awesome to have when you want someone to tell you stories when you want to fall asleep. Romanians only 1 (one) awesome TV show which is Telecinemateca.
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Dear Sir:
Now that you are in the mood to admit shortcomings, maybe you would like to know that AM is British, not American, and, within the context of your earlier entry, she is a feminine woman who appreciates beauty, going to the hairdressers more than Roberta Anastase does. (I sense that her article you mention sought to point out the absurdity of the lady taking six security guards with her to the salon, not of her enjoying the salubrious benefits thereof.)
Sorry for double post if it happened. With kind regards.
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Dear Sir:
Now that you are in the mood to admit shortcomings, maybe you would like to know that AM is British, not American, and she is a feminine woman who appreciates beauty, going to the hairdressers more often than Roberta Anastase does. (I sense that her earlier article on the topic was intended to point out the absurdity of the lady taking six security guards with her to the salon, not of her enjoying the salubrious benefits thereof.)
With kind regards
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