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Newspaper ABC's Jan June 2014
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21-08-2014 2:07pm#1The latest figures are out (finally)
http://www.ilevel.ie/media-blog/print
The normal story at this point...3
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Great analysis sir.
The gradual terminal decline of the old media newspaper sector continues apace.
Some observations:- The Irish Times are playing bulk games.
- Landmark Media (Examiner and Echo etc) seems to be in particularly bad shape. 500 employees for a few regionals that are terminal decline. Bonkers.
- Non-stop popular Aldi / Lidl vouchers failed to lift Sindo sales. Good knows that the Sindo sales would have been without the Aldi / Lidl vouchers.
- Sunday Business Post sales are going from bad to worse. They is no way this title can be even remotely profitable.
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The Irish Times looks to be in real trouble. I think that along with the Sindo/Indo, it was talking about introducing some kind of paywall online. If both are losing readers in print, it is unlikely that they will convince them to pay online. Indeed the IT has gone increasingly downmarket with its clickbait articles online and the Indo has adopted an almost sub-Daily Mail approach on its website. Unfortunately the people behind the Indo website are illiterates when it comes to Information Architecture so everything appears in an unsearchable mess. At least the IT has tried to monetise its back editions.
The SBP must be praying for a new property bubble at this stage. The last time the online figures were published, they had fewer subscribers than some niche bloggers so there's no redemption there. Only their print advertising seems to be keeping them around. Sad as it was a good 'paper.
The Lidl insert is the only believable thing in the Sindo each week.
Regards...jmcc0 -
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a concept lost in the print media. They should forget the ‘newspaper wars’ of previous decades and concentrate on the barbarian at the gates – if not already through the front door and standing in the hall.
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/media-and-marketing/newspaper-sales-continue-to-decline-across-the-board-1.1904236
This article in the Irish Times today was one of those articles that you shake your head, like you would looking at a child having a small tantrum, and worry about any cohesiveness in the business in the face of a much larger adversary – the web/free news/scraper sites/etc.
It flits between snippets of information that portrays the paper in a best possible light (under the circumstances), and compares it to other information regarding their competitors to cast them in an unfavorable light. So, in the interest of fairness, I've come to make a few corrections – for example:
“Sales of The Irish Times fell 4.6 per cent in January-June 2014 compared with the same period in 2013. As this decline was less than the market average, the newspaper made some gains in its share of the daily market”
Ed: But our sales were gifted by the fact that we increased our ‘bulks’ by 51% from 6,036 to 9,140 – so if we took them out of the equation our sales are down 3.5%.
I’d nit-pick my way through the article if Doc McStuffins wasn't about to start so I’ll wrap up with this amazing piece of maths : The article declares the titles sales at 80,332, so to borrow an expression from the NNI – that’s the level playing pitch. How they calculate their sales is how all sales are calculated – correct? No, not so.
“Elsewhere in the daily market, the Irish Daily Star has a circulation of 55,788 in the Republic, down 8.1 per cent…The Irish Daily Mail, published by Associated Newspapers Ireland, fell 4.1 per cent year-on-year to a circulation in the Republic of 48,597.”
in the Republic? Some animals are more equal than others then! Let’s re-write that paragraph to level the pitch a bit.
Sales of The Irish Times fell 2.2 per cent in January-June 2014 compared with the same period in 2013….. The newspaper’s print circulation is 73,033, a drop of 1,618 copies year-on-year…. in the Republic.0 -
More of the same really, and it's hard to see any way back for the print media at this point. While the Indo and Times might be talking up their online presence, have they managed to earn any money from their websites yet? I guess they're stuck in limbo, where they feel they need to have a strong web presence, but can't seem to figure out how to make money from it. Why would you buy the print edition of the Indo when you can get the content for free on their site? And if they introduce a paywall, why would you pay for access to the site if you can get most of the same info for free elsewhere?
Judging by the latest figures, the INM decision to merge the Herald and Sunday World would seem to be the only way for the Herald to survive, and the savings incurred may allow it to continue for another few years. For the standalone titles like the Business Post and the Irish Times, who don't have that option, they surely can't remain financially viable for much longer.
So where does the media go from here? If independent.ie doesn't start to earn its keep, how long will INM continue to fund it with the ever-dwindling profits from the print titles? It's looking bleak.0 -
I had a coffee this morning in Mixgreens, they had eight copies of The Independent for their customers to read, Supermacs are next door and you get a free Independent with your breakfast and they have another stack of them available for everybody else. How do they count these copies in their sales figures?
The Sunday Business Post is in big trouble, I used to buy it but it seems to have less and less news in it. It is too dear to be a second buy. If I were them I would produce it in tabloid form, get rid of the magazine, which is awful, and charge €2.00. The business section of The Sunday Independent is very poor, all about personalities so there is room for a paper like the SBP.
Got the Indo last Sunday for the Aldi voucher, did not take me long to read it. Except for the sport the rest on the newspaper could have been written at anytime, it had no current affairs in it.0 -
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Just further putting numbers to IRE60's point about bulks: IT's paid-for circulation (ie non-bulks) decreased 8.8% versus the Indo's 6.7%.
I made this point previously, but I think it's worth restating: while the daily-circulation figures are similar for the SBP and Examiner the latter has a weekly-circulation of 200k+; the SBP has to cover many of the same fixed costs with a weekly-circulation of 34k. The Phoenix said that internal favourites to replace Taylor are Pat Leahy (predictably) and Ian Kehoe, but that "Leahy knows little about finance and Kehoe knows even less about politics." I know this is a little bit mental, but what about appointing David McWilliams?! Yes, he has no editing experience (and he's not a journalist!), but a Sunday would be relatively forgiving for one with no experience and he would likely bring some fresh ideas, and that, combined with the interest he would generate, might give the paper a boost in publicity. Something has to be done: the simple fact is that, if it falls below ~25k, it's unsustainable.
As usual, gr8 work from IRE60.0 -
@IRE60 - Ditto, I cringed at that misleading article that Laura Slattery wrote. Meanwhile, the Indo haven't even bothered to report on the ABC numbers.
@manageit - Those sales are counted as bulk sales by ABC assuming the sales were at a discount to the retailer.Something has to be done: the simple fact is that, if it falls below ~25k, it's unsustainable.
It is unsustainable now, has been for years. The sustainability test equates to the size of Conor Kileen's pockets.0 -
I was a little taken aback by the Indo - I didnt see the print edition (and we wonder what it's at 112k and heading south) - so I dont know if its in it. Ignoring the problem wont make it go away.0
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I see the British dailies without an Irish edition are all selling 2,000 odd. Does anyone understand their business model? They seem to have a pretty wide distribution (I was in 2 smallish newsagents in Ballsbridge today and they both had The Guardian) but at that rate a lot of the shops must be selling only one or two copies a day. Does there come a point where sales are so pitiful distribution in Ireland (outside maybe Easons and the likes) is no longer justified?0
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The distribution of newspapers is carried out by EMNews and Newspread; the Irish Times distribute their own title as does The Irish Examiner in Munster, EMN distribute it in the rest of the country.
EMN carry the Mail, Sun, Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, Irish News and all European Dailies.In addition to distributing , they also collect the unsold returns and arrange the billing on a weekly basis. EMNews also deliver all UK consumer magazines to the stores at the same time as deliveries of newspapers.Retailers pay a carriage service charge to both EMN and Newspread ( the 100% owned IMNL company that carries Indo, Mirror, Star, Herald and Racing Post each day).
This CSC amounts to almost €100 per week.
The publishers deliver their titles to EMN and Newspread each night who arrange onward transportation to hubs around the country where they are assembled and taken by individual carriers on routes that ordinarily include around 40 to 50 stores.
The logistics of this require extraordinary co-ordination to allow for the papers to arrive at stores in time for opening.
EMNews contract with the publishers( both newspapers and magazines) to manage the placing of their titles in whichever stores are willing to offer them for sale.Retailers only pay for those quantities and titles actually sold, and do not earn anything for displaying titles that don't sell. This ensures that within a short time titles that don't have a reader will be unlikely to be stocked but any customer wishing to buy the FT, Telegraph, Guardian etc can ask the store to order it.
There is an irony that the same vans that provide the 14,000+ bulk Indos to hotels , bars,coffee shops and fast food outlets for free distribution also carry the paid-for Indos that retailers are paying Newspread a carriage charge for.
These bulks affect the paid for market, not only for the Indo but it could be argued for all other daily papers; if a customer in a coffee shop has 10 minutes with a free Indo during their morning break they are very unlikely to actually buy a paper that day.
With reduced sales and fewer retailers on carriers routes the profitability of newspapers for individual shops is seriously eroded by CSC, especially those with sales of less than €500 per week.A standard discount of around 25% off the RRP is applied to the retailers account.Sales of €500 will have a wholesale(cost) value of €375, a profit of €125, but when CSC of €100 is also taken into account then the retailer has earned €25 for 7 days stacking ,taking down , returning unsolds and ensuring those returns are credited.
Space in a shop has a need to provide a return on investment and many stores have reduced the range of publications they stock, preferring to offer items that do not have such volitility of demand and items that are not price controlled /charged for delivery.
The last area of note is the growing number of readers that are being offered Home Delivery by publishers who do not charge a delivery charge for these accounts and are effectively undercutting their own retail customers who couldn't afford to manage a HND at basic cover price.0 -
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Interesting post doublej.
One would think that the fixed costs, the CSC, and the waiver thin profitability, might eventually encourage retailers to stop stocking newspapers altogether.0 -
But... the publishers have the retailers by the short and curly's! A shop not stocking papers - think about it. Every morning 463,000 are bought (say 440,000 active purchases). That's 440,000 people that stepped over the threshold of a retailer to buy a paper. If 25% of them bought something else that's the appeal and the handcuff the publishers have with the retailers. There was outcry when the CSC was introduced - but little else.
I'd fully agree with the free papers - while they are propping up the 'sales' they have to be hitting them at the same time.0 -
Loafing Oaf wrote: »I see the British dailies without an Irish edition are all selling 2,000 odd. Does anyone understand their business model? They seem to have a pretty wide distribution (I was in 2 smallish newsagents in Ballsbridge today and they both had The Guardian) but at that rate a lot of the shops must be selling only one or two copies a day. Does there come a point where sales are so pitiful distribution in Ireland (outside maybe Easons and the likes) is no longer justified?
Its all volume: The Guardian, for example, turns over at the till €1,876,860 p.a. Lets say they keep half of that after retailers margin, distribution and VAT, that's €900k - they just have to look after shipping from A to B.0 -
they just have to look after shipping from A to B.
Shipping from the UK to Ireland to a huge number of Irish shops on a daily basis, almost every day of the year, must cost a small fortune in staff wages, petrol, vans, distribution centres etc. All to sell a tiny number of copies per newsagent.
I understand that marginal variable costs are being covered but it is hard to see how the fixed costs are being covered.
Anyone know how do EMN bill the Guardian? Is it just a variable cost per paper sold or is there a fixed cost?0 -
The distribution of newspapers is carried out by EMNews and Newspread; the Irish Times distribute their own title as does The Irish Examiner in Munster, EMN distribute it in the rest of the country.
EMN carry the Mail, Sun, Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, Irish News and all European Dailies.In addition to distributing , they also collect the unsold returns and arrange the billing on a weekly basis. EMNews also deliver all UK consumer magazines to the stores at the same time as deliveries of newspapers.Retailers pay a carriage service charge to both EMN and Newspread ( the 100% owned IMNL company that carries Indo, Mirror, Star, Herald and Racing Post each day).
This CSC amounts to almost €100 per week.
The publishers deliver their titles to EMN and Newspread each night who arrange onward transportation to hubs around the country where they are assembled and taken by individual carriers on routes that ordinarily include around 40 to 50 stores.
The logistics of this require extraordinary co-ordination to allow for the papers to arrive at stores in time for opening.
EMNews contract with the publishers( both newspapers and magazines) to manage the placing of their titles in whichever stores are willing to offer them for sale.Retailers only pay for those quantities and titles actually sold, and do not earn anything for displaying titles that don't sell. This ensures that within a short time titles that don't have a reader will be unlikely to be stocked but any customer wishing to buy the FT, Telegraph, Guardian etc can ask the store to order it.
There is an irony that the same vans that provide the 14,000+ bulk Indos to hotels , bars,coffee shops and fast food outlets for free distribution also carry the paid-for Indos that retailers are paying Newspread a carriage charge for.
These bulks affect the paid for market, not only for the Indo but it could be argued for all other daily papers; if a customer in a coffee shop has 10 minutes with a free Indo during their morning break they are very unlikely to actually buy a paper that day.
With reduced sales and fewer retailers on carriers routes the profitability of newspapers for individual shops is seriously eroded by CSC, especially those with sales of less than €500 per week.A standard discount of around 25% off the RRP is applied to the retailers account.Sales of €500 will have a wholesale(cost) value of €375, a profit of €125, but when CSC of €100 is also taken into account then the retailer has earned €25 for 7 days stacking ,taking down , returning unsolds and ensuring those returns are credited.
Space in a shop has a need to provide a return on investment and many stores have reduced the range of publications they stock, preferring to offer items that do not have such volitility of demand and items that are not price controlled /charged for delivery.
The last area of note is the growing number of readers that are being offered Home Delivery by publishers who do not charge a delivery charge for these accounts and are effectively undercutting their own retail customers who couldn't afford to manage a HND at basic cover price.
Cheers for all that info, more than I can fully absorb in truth. So if I've picked you up right, even if just one guy is regularly buying the FT say from a small newsagent it will be worth their while stocking it. But as JTMan suggests, there must come a point where it's no longer worth the while of a particular British paper to keep paying EMN to distribute in Ireland. The Indie pulled out a few years ago so they must have reached that point...0 -
if "one guy" is buying the FT each day then he is paying €18.50 per week;assuming that he buys the paper each week from the same outlet(big assumption with holidays,etc) then the retailer will earn €229 in the year ex VAT.
The FT has a M-F RRP of €3.00 and is €3.50 for the Weekend Issue.It is the most expensive Daily but is also the Title that is most likely to port to an electronic only version,given the nature of the product and customer base.
Im not sure if the Independent,Independent on Sunday and "i" newspapers had been distributed by EMN rather than Newspread if they would have removed themselves from the RoI market.
EMN carries all foreign newspapers(German,French,Italian etc) as well as low circulating titles(in the RoI) such as Irish News,International Herald Tribune etc and can provide an effecient marketplace placement for these titles.
The problem for the UK Independent was that they had an historic relationship with INM,owners of Newspread which most likely precluded them from considering a supply contract with Newspreads only commercial competitor,EMN.
Newspaper Distribution has a complex business module;the distributors have two very different customer bases,publishers and retailers.
Publishers insist that the contracts for distributing their titles use the printed cover price (RRP) as the basis for their wholesale arrangement,not only with the distributors but also in the wholesale price that retailers will be billed for the paper,even though they do not have any economic relationship with the shops selling the title.
This can and does affect the profitability of all papers sold in a store which is expected(not legally but by convention) to offer the title for sale at the printed cover price whether they are selling the title in Donegal or Donnybrook, even though the CSC applied to each customer may have enormous variations on the retailers bottom line per copy sold.
It will be a long time before printed newspapers(Daily,Sunday and Provincials) cease publishing but we can expect to see fewer retailers selling them once they feel that the cost(even the additional purchase/footfall argument) outweighs the benefit of stocking a product that has significant additional labour,space and administrative work attached to it.0 -
Shipping from the UK to Ireland to a huge number of Irish shops on a daily basis, almost every day of the year, must cost a small fortune in staff wages, petrol, vans, distribution centres etc. All to sell a tiny number of copies per newsagent.
I understand that marginal variable costs are being covered but it is hard to see how the fixed costs are being covered.
Anyone know how do EMN bill the Guardian? Is it just a variable cost per paper sold or is there a fixed cost?
In my calculation earlier i've taken into account distribution (across Ireland), retailer margin and VAT. I'd estimate the three would swallow up roughly 50% of the cover price to the publisher. So, in the case of the Guardian It would still leave them with €900K p.a.
The "only" difference between the guradian and say the Irish Indo is that the latter is printed in the UK and has to be shipped here every night to EMN - But they could fly with the FT, Times, Telegraph, FT, Express etc - so they could all fly together and save a few quid - even of it was costing the Guradian €1k a night, every night they would still make money on the product being sold in Ireland0 -
Strange one:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/media-and-marketing/gaffney-lauds-radio-gains-as-inm-titles-slip-1.1905416
Last line is a bit of a dig. Again, no comments allowed thus the Boards gets the traffic!0 -
Fair enough. Even if the fixed costs are as low as 1k per day, that's 300k in fixed costs per year to cover, which creates a break even point, which once crossed calls into account the viability of Irish distribution.Strange one:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/sectors/media-and-marketing/gaffney-lauds-radio-gains-as-inm-titles-slip-1.1905416
Last line is a bit of a dig. Again, no comments allowed thus the Boards gets the traffic!
A biased dig. Another rubbish IT article on media numbers.
The article falls to mention that the decline in Indo sales is in line with the entire newspaper industry. Factoring in bulks, The Irish Times performed in line with the Indo. Also, it fails to mention how deeply flawed the JNLR survey is.0 -
With sales of €1.8m, the ex vat payment by EM for the paper is in the region of €1.07m p.a.
With printing and freight costs accounting for €480k, there is a tidy surplus earned by a publisher that doesn't have an office or staff employed in the Republic.
On the matter of reliability of JNLR figures, although I have the highest regard for the methodology employed by ABC to certify paper and magazine circulation, is it not the case that the advertising agencies in Ireland are provided with JNR stats which are multiples of nearly 5 times the circulation figures.
Unlike ABC for UK titles, the indo, ITimes and Examiner are not required to have seperate Mon-Fri and Sat circulation figures, preventing a potential advertiser from knowing the ACTUAL stats for each issue.0 -
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and DoubleJ i'd add that the JNLR is really falling behind (like the Irish Industry that pays for it). No digital research at all, unlike its counterpart in the NRS in the UK. And no plan to introduce the same?0
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The JNRS survey is some kind of numerical witchcraft. Every year readership increases, even as sales fall. They must be figuring that everyone who buys the paper lets 5 of their friends and family read it also.
If they told the real story, the papers would probably pull their titles from it, so it's in their interest to keep things looking good. It's lost all credibility at this stage.0 -
With sales of €1.8m, the ex vat payment by EM for the paper is in the region of €1.07m p.a.
With printing and freight costs accounting for €480k, there is a tidy surplus earned by a publisher that doesn't have an office or staff employed in the Republic.
Thanks for the estimate figures. Freight costs and distribution costs need to be paid, by someone, regardless of how many copied you are selling. There is clearly a break even point which once crossed calls into question the viability of Irish distribution.The JNRS survey is some kind of numerical witchcraft. Every year readership increases, even as sales fall. They must be figuring that everyone who buys the paper lets 5 of their friends and family read it also.
I was asked to take place in a JNRS survey a while ago.
The flawed newspaper question was something like this:
"Which of the following daily newspapers do you read?".
The question is posed in such a way to encourage you to tick multiple boxes and encourages you to say that you read newspapers. It is leading an answer rather than a study that monitors actual behaviour. Total farce.0 -
Thanks for the estimate figures. Freight costs and distribution costs need to be paid, by someone, regardless of how many copied you are selling. There is clearly a break even point which once crossed calls into question to viability of Irish distribution.
I'm trying to calculate this for the Guardian using IRE60's figures but I have grave doubts about my methodology (and I couldn't even swear to the current cover prices: €1.80 weekday and €2.70 on Saturday is it?). I'm coming up with 2500 as the break even point, which is only about 300 below where it is now, but I'm pretty sure higher sales on a Saturday are skewing things...0 -
On a slightly related note, Media Guardian thinks that The People newspaper, who's newspaper sales have fallen from 5,597,036 to 379,500, in the UK, could be next newspaper for the chop.0
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On a slightly related note, Media Guardian thinks that The People newspaper, who's newspaper sales have fallen from 5,597,036 to 379,500, in the UK, could be next newspaper for the chop.
No doubt about it - the editorial has been merged into the Mirror and the People now has no Editor or Dep Ed. Only a matter of time before its more efficient to can the title.0 -
Loafing Oaf wrote: »I'm trying to calculate this for the Guardian using IRE60's figures but I have grave doubts about my methodology (and I couldn't even swear to the current cover prices: €1.80 weekday and €2.70 on Saturday is it?). I'm coming up with 2500 as the break even point, which is only about 300 below where it is now, but I'm pretty sure higher sales on a Saturday are skewing things...
M-F= 1902 (*€1.80*5*52)=€890,136
Sat= 7028 (*2.70*52)=€986,731
==== €1.876M
(some leap on a Saturday - but a good read)0
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