Today, RTL Group announced its plans to buy CNN's stake of shares in the German news channel n-tv. Buying the 50 percent of the shares that CNN currently owns will make the RTL Group the only shareholder of n-tv.

The price of the transaction was not revealed, because the deal will be subjected to the approval of cartel and media regulators. The officials from RTL said in a statement that the n-tv broadcaster is an important member in their family and that "the planned step will give n-tv the necessary room for maneuver for the strategic challenges of the future".

At the moment, RTL Group is the largest one of this kind in Europe, holding 32 television channels and 31 radio stations.
Among the important ones are M6 in France and Five in Britain, the rest are in other 9 countries.

The stake that RTL Group now plans to acquire was originally bought by CNN in 1993, one year after the network had been launched. The two groups, CNN and RTL have shared n-tv equally since 2002.

n-tv attracts more than 5 million viewers a day, which means 6% of Germany's population. When it comes to the German advertising market, n-tv has less than one percent of that.