Archive for the ‘Newspapers’ Category

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News & Observer records solid first quarter

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Employees at The News & Observer in Raleigh fearing a new round of cuts with the end of the year’s first quarter were able to exhale Monday. A memo  to employees from Publisher Orage Quarles III says the newspaper exceeded “budgeted goals in all categories” during the first three months of 2010.

The note gives few details, but credits “better than expected advertising revenue performance and a continued focus on expenses.” The Advertising Department’s “third annual online sales blitz” racked up “more than $1 million in annualized sales,” Quarles adds.

“There are still question marks about the economy and its effect on our ad revenues, but we are seeing signs that the worst may be behind us.  We certainly hope so,” the memo says.

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Newspaper revenue sinks to 23-year low

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Another bad report about newspaper ad revenue: the Newspaper Association of America, a group that some accuse of spinning too positively for its industry, said this week that ad revenue hit its lowest level since 1986 after a drop of 27 percent in 2009.

But the $27.6 billion in 2009 revenue looks worse when you adjust for inflation, the Associated Press’ report says. The $27 billion earned in 1986 “would equal nearly $53 billion in today’s dollars.”

On the other hand, “ad revenue in the final three months of the year fell 24 percent from a year earlier to $7.7 billion — the smallest quarterly percentage decline of 2009.

“‘Unfavorable trends for newspaper ad spending continued to diminish as the fourth quarter progressed, a sign that business conditions have begun to gradually improve,’ NAA President and CEO John Sturm said in a statement.”

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Coupon software bypasses design staff

Friday, March 19th, 2010

In another move sure to lead to cost savings through job cuts, Media General has launched software that allows advertisers to create their own coupons and run them in the newspaper.

The program, which debuted at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and could be rolled out to the rest of the chain’s properties this year,  is enabling more small businesses to advertise in the paper, says Newspapers & Technology magazine.

Weekly Clipper is built on the AdLizard self-service ad platform. Users log in and are taken through four steps that allow them to build their coupon using a template or to upload their own ready-made design.

Denise Ballinger, director of self-service and the ad product marketplace for Media General, told News & Tech she “hopes to implement even more of the self-service features AdLizard can provide to allow advertisers to completely manage their own accounts.”

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Ad spending fell 12.3 percent in 2009

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

We’ve been out-of-pocket for a few days and we’re shoveling through the e-mail. Most significant so far is the report from Kantar Media, formerly known as TNS Media Intelligence.

“Ad spending in 2009 came in at $125.3 billion, a drop of 12.3 percent compared to the prior year,” the report says, according to Crain’s New York Business.

“The good news was that fourth-quarter ad spending fell by only 6 percent. In addition, preliminary numbers for the first quarter of 2010 show most media categories doing better than they were a year ago, said Jon Swallen, a senior vice president at Kantar Media.”

This is worse than a previous report from Medill Reports that said overall U.S. advertising spending was down 9 percent for the year last year. (Kantar isn’t limiting its number to the U.S., perhaps.)

According to Kantar Media, “radio fell 20.3 percent, local television plunged 23.7 percent, magazines dropped 17.4 percent and newspapers 19.7 percent.” Network television was down 7.6 percent for the year but turned around in the fourth quarter to rise 4.1 percent. Cable TV was  down just 1.4 percent.

Internet display advertising rose 7.3 percent.

“The biggest turnaround may be taking place among newspapers,” Crain’s says. “According to Mr. Swallen, advertising is flat so far this year, which puts the category on track to record its best quarter in two-and-a-half years.”

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European papers understand added-value

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Advertising Age takes a look at how European newspapers are charging for content online. “The consensus … is that a hybrid model is the best option for most businesses as publications seek to develop potentially lucrative relationships with paying customers without losing the volume that comes from offering free content.”

The top example: “Le Figaro’s approach, 14 months in the making, keeps the main newspaper content free but offers two other options at $10 and $20 a month. Premium users get access to in-depth information, special offers, twice-daily newsletters, roundtable discussions with journalists, the opportunity to see their own content on the home page of the site and a concierge service that can arrange everything from theater tickets to shirt cleaning.”

Premiums are key, the report says. “In 52 countries around the world, 71 percent told Nielsen that online content would have to be better than what is available free before they would pay for it, and 79 percent would not use a site that charges them if they can find the same information at no cost.”

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Lots of numbers, most of them bad

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Medill Reports presents a roundup of advertising spending for newspapers and magazines from 2009, including a couple of graphs and, as anyone who’s paying attention could tell you, it’s not a pleasant sight.

On the deep end, according to Nielsen figures, local Sunday newspaper supplements show a 45 percent drop in ad revenue. Business-to-business magazines show a 33 percent plunge, and local magazines sank 24 percent. (Sunday supplements and local magazines. This is why we have time to write this blog.)

The bright spots were a 32.2 percent jump for Spanish-language cable television and a 15 percent gain for cable television. FSI coupons were up 12 percent.

In a trend that extends to 2006 at least, overall U.S. advertising spending was down 9 percent for the year last year. In 2008, U.S. ad spending fell 2.6 percent.

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Writing on newspaper industry’s wall is clear

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

A new count by Media Daily News says the newspaper industry has lost 105,000 jobs in the last decade, as the “rise of the Internet began lowering the curtain on the golden age of print.”

“Based on records kept by the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Labor and tallies by various industry watchers, total employment in the newspaper publishing business has declined from 414,000 in 2001 to 309,000 at the end of 2009, a 25.4 percent drop over the course of eight years,” the report says.

Job cuts in newsrooms accelerated last year as “publishers finally decided they had cut other business functions to the bone, and reluctantly began cutting costs in the newsroom.”

The obvious conclusion: “if 2010-2011 doesn’t bring a big rebound in newspapers’ fortunes, coming years may see the quality and quantity of journalism suffer noticeably.”

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Miami Herald puts tip jar back under the counter

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

The Miami Herald announced over the weekend it was ending a program begun in December in which it asked readers to donate to the newspaper.

“After evaluating two months of response, we’ve decided to end the program,” Elissa Vanaver, a company vice president and assistant to the publisher, said in the newspaper’s report. She would not say how much money the effort had raised.

Shortly after initiating the program, in which credit card forms linked at the bottom of articles on MiamiHerald.com and ElNuevoHerald.com enabled donations,  Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said it had “elicited an encouraging steam of gifts, ranging from $2 to $55.”

Vanaver said when the program was launched in December and again this past weekend that The Herald has no plans to charge for content online. The newspaper does charge $2.99 for mobile applications that deliver sports content, its report said.

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Newspaper pre-prints the next victim of online?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Two surveys suggest that newspapers’ pre-print inserts could go the way of classified advertising as online coupons grow in popularity, says Media Daily News.

Coupons.com –  which allows consumers to find coupons they want and print them out at home, download them to mobile devices, or transfer them to stores’ loyalty card accounts — says its digital coupon business grew 170 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, in terms of the volume of savings.

Meanwhile, a white paper released by the Newspaper Association of America and Kannon Consulting says newspaper inserts are in trouble, with big retailers like Sears demanding double-digit rate cuts and the CMO of J.C. Penney’s expressing concern that prepaid inserts don’t reach as many younger consumers. Media Daily News quotes from an analysis of the months-old proprietary white paper by the Poynter Institute’s Rick Edmonds.

The report, says Edmonds,  “warned that inserts, which account for half of retail advertising, are ‘under siege.’ The industry, notoriously pokey in providing return-on-investment metrics or in facilitating ease of placement, needs to tone up its act in a hurry, the report suggests.”

A Scarborough Research report last August said about 7 percent of U.S. households get their coupons from Web sites and about 8 percent get them via text messages or e-mail. In December, a report said spending on newspaper inserts was up 11.2 percent for the year.

In November, The News & Observer’s VP for Display Advertising cited a focus on selling pre-prints as one factor in the decision to discontinue publication of the company’s bi-monthly lifestyle magazine.

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Down is the new “up”

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

A couple of “less bad is good” stories today:

Monthly magazines’ latest quarterly decline in ad pages, at 5.7 percent, is “not the same as a gain but a much smaller loss than the double-digit plunges that have been seen since the third quarter of 2008,” Advertising Age says. Ad pages fell in 94 monthlies this quarter and grew in 59, according to the Media Industry Newsletter.

Total revenue for Lee Enterprises fell just 9.2 percent in January compared with a year ago — the first single-digit percentage decline since 2008, and the fifth consecutive month in which the year-over-year revenue comparison moderated, according to Editor & Publisher.

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