Posted on 05/02/2008 7:45:24 AM PDT by abb
The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported a 39 percent drop in first quarter profit, hurt by an early retirement program charge at Newsweek and a continued loss of revenue from its newspapers.
The Washington-based corporation said earnings fell to $38.8 million, or $4.08 per share, compared with $63.9 million, or $6.70 per share, a year earlier.
The company said revenue climbed 8 percent to $1.06 billion from $985.6 million.
Quarterly results included a $15.3 million, or $1.60 per share, expense related to Newsweek's early retirement program.
Even excluding the costs of the retirement program, earnings fell well below the prediction of $6.58 per share from analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Unlike many publicly traded companies, Washington Post Co. provides little guidance to analysts in predicting future quarterly earnings.
Shares slide 3.5 percent, or $23.50, to $660.0 at the open of trade Friday.
In its newspaper business, revenue and circulation continued to decline.
Newspaper revenue fell 6 percent, to $206.1 million, from $219.2 million in the first quarter of 2007. That comes on the heels of a 10 percent slide in revenue from the first quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2007.
At the flagship Washington Post, advertising revenue was down 11 percent, from $125.1 million, to $111.6 million, mostly from a drop in classified ads.
Circulation fell 4 percent at the Post for both daily and Sunday editions, to 638,300 and 886,000, respectively. The rate of decline is similar to that reported a year ago.
Online revenue, primarily from the washingtonpost.com Web site, grew 8 percent from the year-ago quarter, to $27.1 million, but was not nearly enough to offset losses on the print side.
The corporation now gets roughly half its revenue from its education division, including its Kaplan test-prep and higher education businesses. Revenue in the education unit was up 14 percent, from $475.8 million in the year-ago quarter, to $543.3 million.
The company's cable television unit, which operates under the Cable One brand in states in the Midwest, South and Pacific Northwest, also increased revenue 17 percent, to $174.2 million.
The magazine division, including Newsweek, had a 13 percent drop in revenue, to $53.4 million.
ping
Journal Register Says It’s Through As Public Company
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: May 01, 2008 9:30 PM ET
CHICAGO Its stock delisted by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and shunned by investors, troubled community newspaper publisher Journal Register Co. said late Thursday it intends to stop filing reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Yardley, Pa.-based Journal Register said its board of directors concluded that being a public company just isn’t worth it anymore.
In a statement, the publisher of the New Haven (Conn.) Register, 21 other dallies and 300 community papers, said that “that in light of the NYSE’s action to delist the shares and the company’s limited ability to access the public capital markets for its foreseeable financing needs, the advantages of being a public company are outweighed by the significant accounting, legal, competitive and administrative costs associated with the reporting requirements for public companies.”
Journal Register said it will continue to report results to stockholders in accordance with Delaware law, and will issue press releases disclosing quarterly and annual financial results. It said it will also “maintain many of the corporate governance improvements the company has made in recent years.”
Journal Register has been hammered even harder than its peers by the newspaper industry recession. Its cluster of Michigan dailies have performed particularly poorly — and the debt taken on for their acquisition has been burdensome. On Wall Street, investors bid Journal Register stock to as low as 16 cents a share before it was delisted.
Journal Register said it will file a Form 15 with the SEC, which will immediately end its obligation to file quarterly and annual reports.
“The company anticipates that its common stock will continue to be quoted on the Pink Sheets, a centralized electronic quotation service for over-the-counter securities, to the extent market makers demonstrate an interest in trading in the company’s common stock,” Journal Register said. “However, the Company can give no assurance that trading in its stock will continue in the Pink Sheets or in any other forum.”
Before the announcement, Journal Register (Other OTC: JRCO-PK) ended 4 p.m. EDT trading at 28 cents a share, down 1 cent, or 3.45%.
Journal Register’s annual meeting is Friday.
Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P’s editor-at-large.
Links referenced within this article
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http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=81780
Hearst TV Sees Overall 3% Decline, Digital Up 22%
by Wayne Friedman, Friday, May 2, 2008 9:38 AM ET
Even a big presidential political advertising year can’t save financial results for some TV station groups. Increases in revenue from political advertising—up $8.1 million to $9.6 million—as well as higher digital media and retransmission deal revenues—still spelled a nearly 3% decrease to $165.1 million in revenues for Hearst-Argyle Television’s first-quarter results.
Overall, net advertising sales sank 9%, or $13.7 million to $132.9 million. The chief culprit is the same as it has been for a few reporting periods: the auto category, which is off 16% for the company.
Other categories were also down: retail, furniture, restaurant, movies and health services. Improving ad businesses included consumer packaged-goods, media, financial services and home improvement services.
On the plus side, the company touted a 22% increase in net digital media revenue to $4.9 million, and a 22% increase in retransmission consent revenue to $6.3 million. Hearst-Argyle’s net income for the period increased from $4.3 million to $10 million from the previous period.
Hearst-Argyle CEO David Barrett blamed the housing slump, uncertain credit markets, the sluggish economy and lower impact consumer confidence and spending numbers for the poor results.
Still, he said the company remained confident that it will finish 2008 “with top and bottom-line growth.”
The company noted that 12 of its 26 stations improved revenue growth in the period, versus the same period a year ago. All 18 stations in the top 50 markets outperformed their network’s average prime-time ratings.
Do you think they understand yet?
Oh yes, they understand. Deep down, where they hide stuff that never comes out of their mouths, they understand. But they'll never admit it. They'll go out of business first. And that's the way they're headed.
Newspaper Jobs on the Move — Over the Ocean
2AdPro
In Chennai, India, workers for 2AdPro create ads for more than 50 newspapers.
By Jennifer Saba
Published: May 02, 2008 10:11 AM ET
NEW YORK The excess of newspaper staff-cut announcements in recent months has taken on an unsettling ring. While the loss of jobs is terrifying enough, an added element makes it even more stomach-churning: In some cases, jobs are not so much lost as going elsewhere — often overseas.
Outsourcing is certainly not new to the industry. In almost every department, newspapers have been handing over critical pieces of the business to third parties for more than a century.
Newsrooms have leaned on the Associated Press, founded in 1846, for a great deal of content. Circulation departments turned to outside contractors and trucks to deliver papers to newsstands and homes. Representatives in Pennsylvania field customer service calls from newspaper subscribers in California. But the industry’s current revenue crunch ramps up the urgency to shrink costs. Even the outsourcers are feeling squeezed: consider the two groups of rankled newspaper editors’ recent protests against AP’s new rate structure and fees.
Now the outsourcing of advertising production is drawing wider attention. In the past year-and-a-half, several dailies have transferred that function to overseas outfits, mostly with offices in India.
There are several forces motivating newspapers to move their ad production work offshore. Foremost is the dire need for cost savings. The wiring of the globe for high-speed Internet access, coupled with the growing familiarity of letting foreigners do work once handled stateside, have come together in a common business strategy that has piqued the interest of publishers.
snip
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003797872
the growing familiarity of letting foreigners do work once handled statesideToo true. Americans grew quite familiar with the work done by foreigners in the mass media.
http://wweek.com/wwire/?p=11775
UPDATED WITH TRIB NEWS: Oregonian Part-timers (voluntarily) out by End of June
May 1st 2008 6:00pm
BY: Byron Beck
logo_Oregonian
UPDATE, 6 pm Black Thursday: No crocodile tears here—we’ve just confirmed other bad job news about a competitor. This time it comes from the Portland Tribune, which has laid off a news writer, a Web reporter and nearly the entire copy editing staff. We’ve also heard from at least one Trib insider that the paper will drop from twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) to once a week, on Thursdays.
It’s confirmed.
As Oregon Media Insiders whispered here late last night, The Oregonian has expanded its employee buyout offer to part-timers.
In an unprecedented move, every part-time employee at The O (that tallies up to around 300 people company-wide) is being offered a buyout by the powers that be (we heard it’s driven by publisher Fred Stickel’s office).
In the latest cost-cutting measure during difficult economic times in the newspaper industry, the O’s part-time employees have been told they will receive letters in the mail in the next week addressing their personal situations (salary, benefits, etc.).
If they accept the offer, those employees will have until the end of June to leave the company. Part-time employees are rarely offered a buyout in any company.
If there aren’t enough “volunteers” among the part-timers, PLAN #9 from Outer Space indicates there will be another round of buy-outs offered to full-timers, the third in recent years.
Yes, but the "product" is fine. /s
Now, that is a 'decent' number and I am proud of it, as I do my bit. I keep getting mailings from this rag to subscribe and I just throw them in the trash w/o even opening them and it feels good when I do it? :)
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629344
Degrees in the Past
By Vin Crosbie, The ClickZ Network, May 2, 2008
Articles | Contact Vin | Subscribe
For the past year, I’ve been taking a professional sabbatical. After 12 years of consulting full-time about new media with news industry executives, I accepted a one-year assignment to teach graduate school courses about new media business and experimental new media.
The reason I accepted the teaching assignment was certainly not for the money but because the majority of media company executives I’ve encountered during the past 12 years seemed incapable of grasping the fundamental changes underway in media. Even the newer ones, fresh out of school, seemed largely incapable of dealing with the changes underway. I wanted to travel upstream in their career path to see what could be done to train a new generation of media executives capable of comprehending and leading the future.
I expected to find university media school faculties to be full of people who want to upgrade their curricula for the 21st century; professors who needed some consulting help, much as media executives do. I expected to find university students who were avid users of new media and were confident of their mastery of those technologies.
What I found were faculties resistant to change and students whose insights and mastery of new media were being eroded by the authoritative resistance to change of so many professors.
It’s no secret where I’ve been teaching, and I’m not disparaging my school’s entire faculty. Perhaps a quarter of them are ardently trying to update media curricula to the 21st century.
But another quarter of the faculty is just as ardently trying to prevent any change. They’re obstructionists because they either deny things are changing (for example, one still thinks the Internet is a fad that will disappear) or they’ve grown too comfortable teaching the same curricula year after year for 20 or more years. They are tenured and so can’t be fired, and the doctrine of academic freedom allows them to teach whatever they see fit.
Meanwhile, the remaining half of the faculty would like to change and be up to date, but they resist taking steps to change, mainly because they don’t have the new skills and fear losing face before students or peers. Add those obstructionists to their number, and even basic changes can be voted down.
I initially suspected that most of the elder professors would be obstructionists, but I was surprised to find age isn’t that much of a factor. Although the youngest professors are for change, so are a great many of the oldest. It’s those aged in between who are most obstructive, those who worked in the media industries during the 1990s before entering academia.
During full-time consulting, I found that same obstructionist demographic to be true. The eldest in the media industries were often the most open to change, perhaps because they had a greater perspective than their peers. Executives in their 30s and 40s were most resistant to change. They wanted to continue doing what they’d learned in their 20s, what they’d mastered then, even if times had already changed.
Also, I’d initially suspected that the professors whose specialties were most affected by the Internet would be those most amenable to any change. I discovered otherwise. Although their department heads are avid for change, the majority of professors in the newspaper, magazine, and broadcast curricula are resistant or passively resistant.
Incoming students who are avid users of new media and confident of their mastery of those technologies have their confidence eroded by obstructionist professors who commandingly tell them new media skills aren’t important; that learning new technologies isn’t as important as learning the old theories and concepts, outdated concepts such as mass media theory, media companies as the gatekeepers of information, media companies as the agenda setters for communities, or that “content is king” (despite our living in digital republics).
I’ve lectured at dozens of media schools and I know that mine, despite what I’ve written here, is more progressive than most. However, I’ve discovered that the more prestigious the school, the more resistant it can be to change. Smaller, less prestigious schools adapt more quickly.
I’ve also discovered that media academics follow, rather than lead, their industries. Though schools of medicine, law, or engineering lead their industries, developing the new techniques and doctrines their industries use, this isn’t so with media and media schools. I realize that there are exceptions, but most schools of media still inculcate students to hew to the past, rather than sow the present or future.
Ultimately, to change our media industries, we’ve got to change what media schools teach.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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