Bucharest, 17 July 2012. After a three year slump, Romania's media and entertainment market will finally enter positive territory this year, with the nominal overall market value returning to pre-crisis levels. According to this year's edition of PwC's Entertainment and Media Outlook report, the Romanian media and entertainment sector will grow from 2.7 billion USD in 2012 to 3.4 billion USD in 2016, with a compounded annual growth rate of 5.3%. Yet, in real terms, taking into consideration the inflation rate (estimated at an average of 3.3% over the analyzed period, between 2012 and 2016), the Romanian media and entertainment market will register a modest 2% compounded annual real growth rate. Most of the growth will come from the growth of internet access expenditure (9.3% nominal CAGR rate), while advertising expenditure will register a moderate growth (4.8% CAGR up until 2016). As for end user spending on media products, the PwC reports estimates a negative real growth rate, with a nominal CAGR of 1.7% until 2016, under the projected inflation rate. "It is clear that the media and entertainment sector was heavily affected by the global downturn. Yet this has overlapped with a more severe long term crisis of the sector itself, which is undergoing a radical transformation due to the growth in new digital technologies. These are turning media products into a commodity and are forcing media and entertainment companies to experiment with new forms of monetization for their products and services", stated John Webster, Partner, Assurance Leader, PwC Romania. Although the new projections indicate a slowdown in the growth rhythm of the Romanian media and entertainment industry, the local market remains the third most dynamic in Central and Eastern Europe, after that of Russia (with a CAGR of 10.1%) and Turkey (9.8%), yet ahead of Hungary (5.1%), Poland (4.9%) and the Czec