Posted on 12/05/2006 5:03:34 PM PST by abb
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- New York Times Co. (NYT) Tuesday evening said November advertising revenue from continuing operations decreased 3.8% to $189.9 million from $197.4 million during the same period in the prior year. The media company said total November revenue from continuing operations fell 1.7% to $278.5 million from $283.3 million in the prior year. Monthly advertising revenue fell 4.2% for the New York Times Media Group, fell 10.7% for the New England Media Group, and fell 1.3% for the Regional Media Group. The company added that circulation revenue for November fell 0.4% -- with revenue gaining at the New York Times Media Group and declining at the New England and Regional Media Groups.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
Good news.
Good. Let them get coal for their Christmas bonuses this year.
Ping
I suspect that a 3.8% decrease may disguise a slightly large increase, since it's an absolute decline in revenues. But normally there would be a small increase in advertising charges to account for inflation over the year. Or perhaps they don't dare raise their rates any more.
No. I believe they would call it celebrating the winter solstice and use it as an opportunity to collect profit-share bonuses.
You're probably right about raising rates with recent scandals and audits about phony circulation numbers. It's still a lot of money, but no one likes trendlines that point downward (well, except us).
10.7% DECLINE for Boston Glone revenues..it's maybe now worth about 25% of what they paid for it a few years ago, and that has yet to be written off on the balance sheet..
Best news I've heard all day.
Actually, the price floated by Jack Welch was about half what Pinch bought it for in 1993 ($1.1 billion)...
What a refreshing and continuing turn of events.
In the days of Brokaw, Cronkite and Jennings, one could read the New York Times and predict with absolute accuracy what the lead stories and political slant that would be taken by all 3 major networks.
It is interesting to note that even the main stream media is to some extent controlled by FOX News service. Chris Wallace let the cat out of the bag when he told us that when he was with ABC News the TV set was alwas tuned to FOX. They had to be viewing the opposition. And they react to FOX Coverage.
But all newspapers are fairing badly. First because younger people do not read newspapers. It used to be that when a young persons got married and got homes of their own they subscribed to the local newspaper. That is no longer true. With 24 hour cable news and the internet the readership and of newspapers have grown older. At some point all newspaper readers will have died and newspapers will die with it.
What interests me with the media is their belief that about half the population votes for Demmocrats so half the potential audience should watch liberal programming.
But that is not true. The Democratic party is make up of the super rich, the well educated, the working class and the poor. By far the largest number of Democratic voters are the working class and the poor. Those two categories of Democratic voters entrust the leadership of the Democratic party with their political power.
They rarely if ever watch a newscast or a read a paper, because they have entrusted their polticla present and futuer to the democratic party.
Thus a left leaning network only has two small parts of the party as potential audience. The super rich and the well educated are the only potential audience for liberal leaning programming. And that is at best 10 percent of the electorate.
On the other hand Conservatives are very interested in what the Republican party is doing. They watch TV and listen to radio. Thus a Rush Limbaugh draws 14.5 million listeners and Air America drew less than 2 million.
It is pretty simple, the potential Conservative audience is about 7 times as big as the potential liberal audience. Perhaps in time the owners of the media will figure it out.
A liberal media outlet will get a much smaller audience or readership than a conservative one.
It is my opinion that a truely consevative cable channel would draw at least 5 times the audience as anyting now on TV. That means the top show would draw about 12 million viewers. .. about the size of Rush's audience. That is 6 times the size the FNC audience.
If they didn't raise rates, the money they earned this year is still worth at least 3% less than the money they earned last year, making the real drop more like 6 or 7%.
The Social Security administration admits to a 3% inflation rate over the past year. It was probably quite a bit higher.
Good analysis.
It's so funny to go into Starbucks in Colorado in the late afternoon and see all the New York Times copies still resting untouched in their monopolistic rack.
Make sure to pick up the NY Times subscription card litter on the floor and send them back for processing. Its their litter after all.
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