Local newspapers odd man out in recovery

March 18th, 2011

A continuing decline in local advertising made newspapers the only ad-supported medium not to benefit from last year’s economic recovery, says a study released Thursday by Kantar Media, a unit of WPP that tracks marketing activity in major media.

The study says total advertising revenue increased in the final quarter of 2010, which represents a full year of gains when compared to 2009 numbers, the New York Times said.

The study found a 6.5 percent increase in revenue compared with 2009. Ad spending fell 12.3 percent in 2009 compared to 2008.

Newspapers, with a decline of 3.5 percent overall, “was the sole category to suffer a decline last year compared with 2009,” the Times says.

“[G]ains in ad spending in national newspapers, up 2.7 percent, and Spanish-language newspapers, up 2 percent, could not overcome the decline in ad spending in local newspapers, which was 4.6 percent.”

Television grew by 10.3 percent compared with 2009. Internet display ads were up 9.9 percent. Outdoor media was up 9.6 percent. Radio grew by 7.6 percent. Free-standing coupon inserts were up 5.4 percent. Magazines saw 2.9 percent growth.

Automotive advertising, a local newspaper staple, was the category of advertising showing the most growth. It grew 19.8 percent compared with 2009, the newspaper said. Ads from auto dealers climbed 26.3 percent and ads from automakers increased 16.4 percent.

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Newspaper ad revenue at 25-year low

March 17th, 2011

Though the slide has slowed, the $26 billion spent on newspaper ads last year represents  a 25-year low, according to figures released Tuesday by the Newspaper Association of America.

The industry took in $25 billion in ad revenue in 1985, the Associated Press says.

“While the economy has slowly improved since 2009, newspaper ad sales continue to wane due to customers’ shift toward online advertising. Newspaper advertising totaled $7.3 billion in the last three months of 2010, down 4.7 percent from the prior year.”

Online ad revenue was up 10.9 percent last year to $3.04 billion after two years of decline, says Radio & Television Business Report. “All other ad categories were negative, although they did not repeat the double-digit percentage declines seen for two straight years (three for classified). National advertising fell 4.6 percent to $4.22 billion; retail was off 9.1 percent to $12.93 billion; and classified dropped 8.6 percent to $5.65 billion.”

NAA President and CEO John Sturm said advertising has shown signs of a continued turnaround and an essential repositioning. “Newspapers – in print and digital form – remain the largest source of original, high-quality news and information in the United States, reaching nearly two-thirds of all adult Internet users and attracting more than 164 million people who read a newspaper in print or online each and every week.”

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Technology takes news away from journalists

March 15th, 2011

The takeover of news via the software necessary for digital platforms may be the  the biggest threat to journalism, not where or how people get information, says the annual State of the News Media Report.

“The biggest issue ahead may not be lack of audience or even lack of new revenue experiments. It may be that in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own future,” Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism write.

For the first time ever, more people regularly get their news online (46 percent) than from print newspapers (40 percent), the study says.  In fact, “Every media sector is losing audience now except online. …  In 2010 every news platform saw audiences either stall or decline — except for the Web.”

Rosenstiel and Mitchell say, “News organizations — old and new — still produce most of the content audiences consume. But each technological advance has added a new layer of complexity — and a new set of players — in connecting that content to consumers and advertisers.

“In the digital space, the organizations that produce the news increasingly rely on independent networks to sell their ads. They depend on aggregators (such as Google) and social networks (such as Facebook) to bring them a substantial portion of their audience. And now, as news consumption becomes more mobile, news companies must follow the rules of device makers (such as Apple) and software developers (Google again) to deliver their content. Each new platform often requires a new software program. And the new players take a share of the revenue and in many cases also control the audience data.

“That data may be the most important commodity of all. In a media world where consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it, the future will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user. That knowledge — and the expertise in gathering it — increasingly resides with technology companies outside journalism.”

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CBS vs. newspapers = WRAL vs. The N&O

March 10th, 2011

A story about CBS’s plan to go after local newspapers and “make [the] company’s single-market websites into the new local newspapers” points at Raleigh and how WRAL’s site tops The News & Observer’s.

“[T]he dynamic in the broader Raleigh, N.C., market is remarkable,” MediaPost’s TV Watch blog said today. “Capitol Broadcasting Co.’s site for CBS affiliate WRAL-TV has greater Web traffic than the local News & Observer, which emphasized the Web at a considerable level before many other papers.”

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told investors on Monday, “We think we can replace the Yellow Pages, replace the newspaper. … [W]hen you get up in the morning, you should be able to turn on that local CBS website and get everything you would need — everything that would be provided by your newspaper.”

Newspapers got a head start on the Web because it’s easy to post text and photos. But video, which CBS outlets have plenty of, is the key going forward, the blog says. People are “less willing to read lengthy articles. They’re hungry for info chunks. …

“On Thursday, WRAL.com was streaming a murder trial live [the trial of Brad Cooper of Cary for killing his wife]. And a site visitor’s attention was immediately drawn to the one-click opportunity to get inside the courtroom. On the News & Observer site, there was a story about the case that took some scrolling to find. Pretty telling?”


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Gannett to tag properties everywhere

March 8th, 2011

How big is Gannett? We’ll apparently get a demonstration beginning next week when it launches its first corporate branding campaign and puts its new logo all over its 81 community newspapers, 23 TV stations and more than 100 digital properties, according to USA Today, the publisher’s flagship, which will also display the logo.

New Gannett logo debuts Monday

The new Gannett logo debuts Monday.

“The goal is to communicate that the company — long identified as the nation’s largest newspaper publisher and a major owner of TV stations — has evolved into a forward-looking digital power,” USA Today says.

All of the company’s properties are to begin more prominently identifying themselves as part of Gannett via the new logo. The publisher will also run ads with the new tagline, “It’s all within reach,” on national cable news channels and in digital, print and social media.

Among Gannett’s digital properties is Captivate, which programs TV-like screens in nearly 9,000 elevators and lobbies, the newspaper says.

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IAB unveils new online ad formats

February 28th, 2011

Six new online ad designs described as  “fairly large” and including “many high-resolution and interactive elements” have been sanctioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and are soon to begin showing up everywhere, Advertising Age says.

The new ads, illustrated here, were chosen in a competition that drew 36 entries from 24 companies. The winning entries come from AOL, Unicast, Google, Pictela, Genex and Microsoft.

The IAB, which administers a universal agreement on the size, shape and function of online ads, says it put out a call in September for new ads that would “encourage engagement with viewers on their terms and allow people to participate confidently with brands.” The new formats support such interactive elements as movie trailers and videos, games, quizzes and shopping modules, Ad Age says.

The new ad units are:

The Portrait, a 300×1050 canvas format with state-of-the-art plug-and-play functionality, which was developed by AOL.

The Slider, an overlay unit on the bottom of a page that is like a touchscreen, prompting users to slide the entire page over to unveil “a full branded experience,” which was developed by Unicast & Mediamind.

The Billboard, by Google/YouTube,which runs the full width of the page and has full close-ability.

The Filmstrip, from Microsoft, a 300×3000 canvas viewable through a 300×600 window and fully controlled by the viewer.

The Pushdown, a pushdown unit by Pictela with broad functionality via a visual toolbar.

The Sidekick Expandable, a format that launches from a standard ad and pushes page content leftward, revealing a large, functional canvas. It was developed by Unicast.

The IAB will evaluate the six new ad formats to see which ones gain a wider acceptance with online publishers, and those that do will become a part of IAB’s official roster.

The IAB also said today that 11 of the 18 current IAB standard ad units will be retired because they are no longer commonly bought and offered throughout the market.

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Ft. Worth makes money selling TV insert

February 22nd, 2011

McClatchy’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram expects to reap $500,000 in new revenue this year from “TV Star Plus,” a new subscription-based television guide, News & Tech says.

In just two weeks, more than 15,000 subscribers have agreed to pay $2.50 a month for the publication. It had been a free insert in the newspaper and will still be available for free in newsstand copies of the Star-Telegram.

The Star-Telegram developed the publication with FYI Television, a Grand Prairie, Texas-based TV listings company.

Other McClatchy papers have changed their TV guide inserts to subscription-based models with less success, including the company’s North and South Carolina papers, which offer subscriptions to ON-TV Magazine, a product of NTVB Media.

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Tribune moves deeper into e-commerce

February 16th, 2011

Two of Tribune’s top newspapers have opened online stores as a means of producing revenue, reports the Financial Times (the site requires registration).

The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune “have opened large shopping sections  on their websites in recent months, offering daily deals in partnership with the online coupon site, Groupon, and discounts on food, travel and entertainment purchases,” the paper said Monday.  Here are the Times’ Shop, and the Tribune’s Chicago Shopping.

“Many papers sell reproductions of their photographs and front pages, along with mugs, T-shirts and other memorabilia. But the Tribune Company’s foray into broader e-commerce marks a first for the industry, said Alan Mutter, a news industry analyst and author of the Newsosaur blog.”

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Miami Herald video grows as others cut back

February 11th, 2011

Many U.S. newspapers are posting less online video as they lay people off, according to a study of 100 U.S. newspapers undertaken by the Associated Press. Not too long ago, video was touted as a way to boost traffic and revenue, Beet.TV says.

Kevin Roach, the AP’s director of U.S. broadcast news, conducted the study and would not give Beet.TV numbers, but said newspapers’ video operations are often the first to be cut when savings are ordered from above.

But the Miami Herald is one paper doing a lot with video, and Beet.TV links to a Poynter report that explains how the McClatchy newspaper is succeeding where others have given up.

“Last year, MiamiHerald.com saw about a 25 percent growth in video traffic, making it the second-biggest traffic driver behind articles,” the Poynter report says.

The Herald has learned that, as Roach suggest, breaking news works best and that videos they were posting of editorial board meetings and of news makers speaking out on specific topics don’t get a lot of viewers.

The Herald and its Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald have two full-time news videographers and two photographers who spend part of their time on video, and they’ve joined with local TV stations to share content and cross-promote material, Poynter says.

The Herald and El Nuevo Herald also collaborated with WPBT2, one of South Florida’s PBS affiliates, to produce an hour-long documentary about last year’s earthquake in Haiti.

The Miami paper’s video group produces about 40 percent of what’s on the site and the rest comes from outside vendors, such as CineSport and The AP.

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McClatchy continues to sink

February 9th, 2011

McClatchy posted 4th quarter earnings with a 43 percent drop in revenue Tuesday and its stock price followed, dropping 12 percent to less than $4.50 a share.

The publisher also “warned that ad spending appears to be falling at an even quicker pace than before,” the Associated Press said. Ad revenue dropped 10 percent in January from the same month a year ago, following a 7 percent decline for the fourth quarter and a 6 percent decline in the third.

“Although McClatchy’s digital ad revenue climbed 5 percent in the fourth quarter, it was not enough to offset a 9 percent decline on the print side,” the AP said.

“Meanwhile, revenue from newsstand sales and subscriptions fell 3 percent. That made for an overall decline of 6 percent to $370 million from $393 million.”

The Tampa Bay Business Journal’s report quotes McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt as saying, “Overall, we made good progress in 2010. We held costs down and saw advertising revenue trends improve. As a result, we grew operating cash flow. We also strengthened our financial position by refinancing and reducing debt.”

Also on Tuesday, McClatchy’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced that it was cutting 22 positions, which matches moves by several of the chain’s papers since the start of the year.

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