Posted on 10/25/2012 11:46:50 AM PDT by lbryce
For years, The New York Times Co. has been fighting a losing battle to replace its dwindling print advertising revenues with digital ones. So when an analyst singles out the results from a quarter as “shockingly weak,” you know that’s pretty bad.
That’s what happened Thursday morning on a conference call to discuss the publisher’s third-quarter earnings. The numbers were indeed somewhat grim: Total ad revenues for the company were down 8.9% from the same period in 2011, with both print and digital advertising falling.
Although circulation revenues rose 9.3%, largely on the strength of a successful program to charge for digital access to the Times, it wasn’t enough to offset the dismal ad-side performance. The result was a 60% drop in operating profit, to $8.5 million, and a loss from continuing operations of 2 cents per share.
Denise Warren, the company’s chief advertising officer, said the advertising struggles reflected a mix of cyclical issues and secular changes in the market.
On the cyclical front, she said, “You can write off the economy but we are hearing from business leaders that they are extremely concerned and the lack of business confidence is growing.”
But while that’s having a temporary effect on spending, the more serious problem may be the fact that the Times Co. just can’t compete effectively in the game of selling mass audiences to advertisers. Warren cited “an abundance of inventory” and “efficient buying methods such as programmatic buying” offered by Google and Yahoo as forces driving down ad rates.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
“You really have to peel back the onion in terms of what you’re offering,” she said.
Peel back the onion? Not nearly the eloquence you might expect from the Times.
In trying to explain the shockingly weak ad results, Denise Warren, the Times Chief Advertising Officer describes the Times situation in terms of an onion, which is much more revealing than you might think, the Times' perspective on the world more like "the Onion" than what is really going on.
Warren:Uh, uh,.... oh, uh...oh, uh....ahem...uhhh. Okay. Okay. Let me say it the way it is. Frankly, we're just slime, a situation that predates the internet and the people know it.
Bush’s fault...........
BUSH’S FAULT!
The Times isn't an old grey lady anymore. She's just a dead gal walking.
Ad-Less Shrugged. (tm)
Ad-Less Shrugged. (tm)
What are the demographics of the average NYT reader:
1. 30 and up
2. In education or media industries
3. In arts production or finance
4. Financially well off, trust babies
5. Very DNC connected
Not that many people. Why they should be so relevant is beyond me. They are the liberal mafia.
NY TIMES Stock down 20%
When Newspapers fail to report the news, and shape it with their individual bias’s to fit their agendas, they loose a large share of their audience. If they would like to be financially more stable....report the news and don’t choose a side.
Newspapers forgot what business they were in. If asked, most today would say they were in the information business, that is wrong.
Newspapers are in the eyeball business. Simply put, they do not make money on subscription, they make money on advertisement. The more eyes that see the ad the more they can charge.
Now newspapers have never been unbias. Yellow journalism was the norm, so what makes a difference today as opposed to a hundred years ago?
This is also simple. Up until the 1950s every major city and many smaller cities had two or more newspapers. Each with their own point of view. This was so common that many newspaper included their bias in their name, either Republican or Democrat. Even if they did not, the readers knew their bias.
People subscribed to the newspaper that match their point of view.
In the 1950s many things began to change and reading newspapers stop being the habit it once was. As readership declined and newspapers began to go out of business the industry made their fatal mistake. They kept their bias which automatically turned off many of their readers.
Today there are many sources of information. If you are politically on the far left, you read the New York Times or the LA Times if not, why bother.
To be honest I do not want a news source that just re-enforces my beliefs. I want a simple un-bias presentation of the facts; who, what, when, where and why.
No one killed killed newspapers, they committed suicide.
Hey Carlos, it may be getting time to sell off the assets and cut your losses.
The New York Times is a Communist Kamikaze. They have purposely crashed their craft into the superstructure of good old fashioned American ideals and Judeo-Christian values. What’s left of them belongs at the bottom of the ocean.
The SLIMES is unreadable: written by Ivy Leaguers who read the Cliff Notes version of the Communist Manifesto.
AlGore's fault....he invented the internet.
“an abundance of inventory”
Is that the ads remaining unsold or the mounds of liberal tripe still lying around the offices?
LOL! It's call competition, idiot.
5.56mm
That's not what Obama says, yet they'll still endorse him.
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