MTG's Slovenia subsidiary Prva TV will only be broadcasting for a few more months to meet all of its contractual obligations, the Slovenian company said in a written statement .

MTG acquired Prva TV, at the time Slovenia's third largest commercial TV station, for EUR 8.1m in mid-2006 to build the brand TV3, whose market share increased to 11% from 1% five years ago.

Nevertheless, TV3 has been unable to increase its share in the advertising pie accordingly. Seeing little chance of improvement in the coming years, the management of MTG decided to close down the channel.

Pink slips will be handed in in accordance with Slovenian legislation and the staff will get the benefits they are eligible for. They will also be able to apply for job vacancies at MTG.

"I regret having to take the decision to scrap TV3, but I still believe we have been in a position to build a big story with the team and plans we had.

"We have however been forced into taking this extreme measure by the situation in the Slovenian media market, which is dominated by monopoly," general manager of TV3 Gregor Memedović said.

According to him, the loss of TV3 will have a negative impact on the Slovenian advertising market, while also sending out a negative message to other potential foreign investors in the Slovenian media space.

Based on a report by Prva TV and the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija, the Competition Protection Office last year initiated proceedings against the US-owned production house Pro Plus, which operates TV channels POP TV and Kanal A and the news portal 24ur.com.

However, the proceedings were not launched until a year and a half after Prva TV made its complaint in which it presented documents showing that Pro Plus offered better terms to advertisers advertising only with the company. Prva TV argued that this had proved Pro Plus had abused its monopolistic position.

The business daily Finance reported a while ago that MTG was withdrawing from Slovenia and that TV3 was being eyed by the owner of the Greek media company Antenna Group Minos Kyriakou.