The advertising outlook for newspapers is going from awful to horrendous. The New York Times announced first quarter earnings today, revealing that total advertising revenues for its news media group (which includes the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other regional newspapers) declined 28.4 percent, versus an 18.4 percent declinelast quarter. So the rate of decline for is intensifying
Internet advertising revenues declined 6.1 percent to $67.6 million, compared to a 3.5 percent decline last quarter. The advertising situation at About.com is more “anemic” than at NYTimes.com, although cost-per-click rates at About.com seem to be holding up. Total advertising revenues were $335 million in the quarter and all revenues, including circulation, were $609 million. The company as a whole posted a net loss of $74.2 million. In other words, the New York Times lost more money across the board than it made from Internet advertising.
The newspaper has been trimming staff, cutting costs, and selling assets to meet its financial obligations. CEO Janet Robinson expects advertising revenues to decline in the second quarter at a rate “similar to that of the first.” But from her talks with advertisers she gets the sense that they are “saving dollars in the first half” of the year to possible spend more in the second half, if they can. (In other words, they are holding back and taking a wait-and-see approach, which is smart in this economy).
During the conference call, she also noted that the company is exploring new ways to generate online revenues beyond advertising, but cautioned that the new revenue models would have to be additive “without affecting the display advertising business.” She didn’t specify where those alternative revenues would come from, whether from some new micropayment scheme or somewhere else.
Rupert should buy the NYT and make it a little bit more fair and balanced then capital shall come back.
A bar graph??? who will read your heap of text?
This is racist !!
lol
i chuckle every time i see this
ur a racist
As always the New York Times is behind the times (no pun intended). The Wall Street Jjournal is run by neo con News Corp, which is a much more business savvy company. http://iamned.com/blog/ no more recession
… the shift continues…
They should start charging for online content – no more freebies.
The NYT would never allow such a crappily-edited story run in their pages… Come on Erick, can’t someone read through your stuff before you post? It is good information, but I would like fewer typos.
Aside from that, it is ironic that these numbers came out around the same time that the NYT won 5 Pulitzers.
The problem is everything about the NY Times is liberal and leftist – from the writing, choice of spin, the Pulitzers, etc.
Thinking people get their information elsewhere and, too often, a lot of information is found elsewhere that the Times chooses to ignore, censor, etc. A lot of it is lying by omission and enough people know about it.
They might have a chance if they put out a quality product.
The loss rate isn’t necessarily increasing – or increasing that fast.
Say that the NYT brought in $10M in ad revenue in Q3, then $8M in Q4. That’s a 25% drop in revenue.
Then, in Q1, let’s say they went down to $6M. It’s the same drop as from Q3 to Q4, but the percentage drop looks much worse – 33%.
As a business owner I always thought the return on newspaper adds is terrible, unless – maybe – you are a massive advertiser with full page adds every week. I guess part of it is that they are hurting now the most since the smaller businesses that don’t see the return pull their adds and become more creative promoting their businesses.
Newspapers have been getting most of their revenue from print advertising. But if you’re an advertiser, why spend money in print when the audience is declining?
Also, newspapers are raising the cover price so circulation will drop even more. Yet they offer the articles for free online where the younger audience is reading them now. Online ads don’t raise nearly enough money to cover staffing.
Any newspaper experts out there care to explain how they are going to survive??
Simple productivity issues – newspapers cost too much with their business model, compared to web-only.
Those who insist that newspapers have better content – ignore that thousands of writers have shifted from print to blogging.
We can’t sustain paper as a distribution vehicle. For the sake of the green earth, it’s better for papers to die.
Newspapers have run they’re course. With cheaper faster alternatives like, up to the minute cable news, radio, and internet, who would waste their time and money on a newspaper?
Is there any inherent value to reading the news in paper format? It’s slower, messier, and less accessible.
http://www.less...ch.blogspot.com
It is always the worst during a shift. Print media is where they come from, but it is also what is holding back ad rates for online. Once print media is pretty much dead, online ad rates will rise to the point where a business can be sustained. I just hope good journalism can survive the shift and we don’t end up with a ton of partisan garbage like Fox News.
Please… NYTimes is also partisan… it is as far from the center – if not more – than Fox News.
Not only is NYTimes massively liberal in its bias, it also gave the world the Jason Blair School of made up Journalism. It also got US service men killed by release information it had no business releasing.
Glad to see them crumble.
50StateJobs says,
“Online ads don’t raise nearly enough money to cover staffing. ”
Did you get your MBA from the “school of dickheads”?
Online advertising has been on the increase. Newspaper who have large user base and along with offer subscription based services are doing fine. Yes, the print business is going under but at the same time newspaper who are shifting their focus and resources online are going to survive and be able to pay for their staff and rack in profits as some newspaper already doing that.
Which ones are you referring to? Who is
“doing fine?”
The Wall Street Journal seems like it is the only one that called it right by charging from day one, even when it wasn’t fashionable. Others have tried walling off certain content – remember Times Select? – and the throngs cried that the “internet should be free.” Well, now the NYT has the number one newspaper web site in the world and it is still hurting. No online only news source (or newspaper) is making significant amounts of money – especially if they’re doing their own reporting…
One partial answer to declining publisher ad revenues: make online content and advertising interactive and usable – i.e., help readers to collect, organize and tackle their tasks, events and projects: http://springpa...com/publishers/
This is not very surprising, and it will probably be even worse in this quarter.
If this development continues, it will be the end of many newspapers.
The New York times is an old fart that moves as if they got marbles in their underwear
ouch – must really hurt. esp since they are doing some really interesting things with their content and new web interfaces.
unfortunately, with results like these, there is not much time left to experiment in order to find the model that works.
see http://platform...zine-newspaper/ for a collection of my favourite recent posts about the future of the newspaper
Eh..paper advertising has been dying for awhile now, and this could be the nail in the coffin for many newspapers as we know them.
nyt can do better than this in terms of taking advantage of their platform to make its business more profitable. If they don’t really want to go down, they would have to give a REALLY serious thought on how to do it. Just look around and see what everyone else is doing.
Newspapers are running of course. but with cheaper faster alternatives like, up to the minute cable news, radio, and internet.
NYT made decisions sealing its fate as early as 1995 when it declined buying into Monster.com. NYT was so convinced of its old business model it refused to consider changes, and now the market has shifted leaving NYT uneconomic. Read more at http://www.TheP...ixPrinciple.com