The decline continues

Blanchguy

Well when the increase was imposed, the newspaper had some claim to being on their knees, the hotel industry, not so much.

dulpit

IRE60 wrote: »

Are the 9k odd people who buy the Echo also Examiner buyers? if so, we're in for a bit of cannibalism.

Probably not, the echo is much more local news, if you want to know what's going on in the world you wouldn't read it. But if you want to know what's going on locally you wouldn't get that in the examiner.

IRE60

dulpit wrote: »

Probably not, the echo is much more local news, if you want to know what's going on in the world you wouldn't read it. But if you want to know what's going on locally you wouldn't get that in the examiner.

Does the world not begin and end in the People's Republic of Cork!?

BarryD2

Blanchguy wrote: »

Well when the increase was imposed, the newspaper had some claim to being on their knees, the hotel industry, not so much.

On their knees?: Independent News & Media?? Rupert Murdoch?? etc etc etc. Remember the VAT rate applies to all the British publishers than sell their wares here - for the moment anyway. Look down the magazine rack of any decent sized newsagent - dominated by publishers from UK and elsewhere.

JTMan

Great Washington Post article about the destruction of the local newspaper industry in the states.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2019/0206/1027901-denis-obrien-courts/

Wonder could the SBP's future be jeopardised if the DOB defamation case goes against them.

JTMan

The owner of the SBP put the paper under a 4 month review as to it's future recently. No news on the outcome of the review yet.

IRE60

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2019/0206/1027901-denis-obrien-courts/

Wonder could the SBP's future be jeopardised if the DOB defamation case goes against them.

They should give DOB his own seat on the Golden Arches! All depends on the level of damages (if any). Remember, DOB scalped the Mirror for 750k - I doubt SBP could take a hit like that.

JTMan

Kilcullen, who now owns the SBP, can afford a 750k hit! That is if he is willing to pump more capital into Post Publications.

Loafing Oaf

IRE60 wrote: »

They should give DOB his own seat on the Golden Arches! All depends on the level of damages (if any). Remember, DOB scalped the Mirror for 750k - I doubt SBP could take a hit like that.

His lawyers told the jury they should award Mr O'Brien substantial damages to reflect the seriousness of allegations made in a number of articles in the newspaper almost four years ago.

They also claimed the articles were published maliciously and presented in a lurid way and the jurors should also award aggravated damages as a result.

I guess there's no way of knowing what these terms might mean in pounds, shillings and pence unless and until the case goes DOB's way...

L1011

I can only but wish for a Reynolds-grade award - either the original or the appeal!

JTMan

Irish Newspaper Circulation July-Dec 2018 Island of Ireland Report published.

10% YoY declines. The journey into the sunset for newspapers continues.

Great analysis by iLevel.ie here.

An Ciarraioch

Are regional titles showing similar declines, or does the comparative scarcity of digital alternatives insulate them?

JTMan

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

Are regional titles showing similar declines, or does the comparative scarcity of digital alternatives insulate them?

The vast majority of regionals are not ABC audited anymore. One exception is the Evening Echo which showed a 9% decline YoY.

Regionals are hurting too.

IRE60

Timmy Dooley in his submission 'A Policy To Sustain High Quality Journalism In Irish Public Life' cites that:

'National Newspaper circulation is down 50% over the past 10 years, and down 35% for local newspapers'

I don't know where he gets his figures - but the 50% for nationals is correct - so one could reasonably argue that his 35% is from a decent source also

IRE60

I just can’t understand the duplicity involved here. The Irish Times go to great lengths to extrapolate the ROI numbers only (even though it’s called the Island of Ireland Report) in the following paragraph - which is online here

"The Irish Daily Star sells 39,039 copies in the Republic, down 10 per cent, while the Irish Daily Mail’s circulation south of the Border was 29,654, down 19 per cent. The Irish Sun had sales of 52,121 in the Republic, down 8 per cent year on year, while the Irish Daily Mirror’s circulation was 28,632, down 11 per cent"

However, they quote their own sales as a combined digital and print – but never actually mention the print figure which is 58,131.

Furthermore, when quoting their numbers they don’t extend the courtesy they extended to the other papers by shaving 2,300 from their own number as those sales occur in Northern Ireland.

So for clarity - their newspaper sales n the Republic are in fact 41,337 - stripping out NI and bulks from their Circulation.

L1011

Adding print and digital subscriptions is disingenuous too as most delivery customers are also digital subs. These will be double counted

JTMan

A few thought on the ABC numbers ...

-> 26,652 is just not a sustainable number for the SBP. The new owner has said that he might end the print run. Surely, this number only increases the likelihood of that.
-> The Heralds numbers are catastrophic. 17% decline YoY. They heavily discounted the paper to 50 cent in several major supermarket chains and this seems to have made little difference.
-> The Irish Daily Star was just about profitable before the latest drop. More cuts will be needed to keep its head above water.
-> With Brexit a few weeks away - The Guardian (and similar scale) must be thinking is it worthwhile paying the tariffs to export to Ireland anymore.
-> Really difficult to tell what will give next but The Irish Daily Star, Sunday World, Examiner and Herald surely have a matter of years left before the inevitable.

IRE60

I'd be of the opinion that INM will throw the Daly Star under the bus before the Herald - wrongly IMO.

The tariffs they are an unknown quantity but only hit a few publications on the face of it. The Sunday Times prints the Mag in Bligty and ships it over on a Wednesday - thats going to be interesting. Likewise the DS and DM throw papers across the border every night - whats the deal there?
SBP - thats a strange one - little or no movement in the digital subs and for a paper with a digital future!

Loafing Oaf

JTMan wrote: »

A few thought on the ABC numbers ...

-> 26,652 is just not a sustainable number for the SBP. The new owner has said that he might end the print run. Surely, this number only increases the likelihood of that.

Especially if it coincides with a right cleaning out in the DOB defamation trial. One might think...

Muahahaha

Is it known how many digital subs the SBP has? With their AB target market and specialised business news you'd imagine they are in a good position to sell lots of yearly subs, especially given many of them would be company expenses so less likely to cancel once the sub is signed up for.

Loafing Oaf

Muahahaha wrote: »

Is it known how many digital subs the SBP has? With their AB target market and specialised business news you'd imagine they are in a good position to sell lots of yearly subs, especially given many of them would be company expenses so less likely to cancel once the sub is signed up for.

According to ilevel, "their cert shows that they have 2,896 digital subscribers in comparison to 2,055 in the same period last year." So moving in the right direction, but presumably nowhere near enough yet to run a viable digital-only business...

JTMan

IRE60 wrote: »

I'd be of the opinion that INM will throw the Daly Star under the bus before the Herald - wrongly IMO.

INM previously said that the titles will continue as long as they make a "positive contribution" to the group. Maybe it will be a case of which title fails under this definition first but the consequences of letting one title go are big for the group in terms of lost cross-group revenue for distribution, printing and content. Hence, it still might be worth keeping the titles going as loss making if they are still making an overall net positive contribution to the group.

IRE60 wrote: »

The tariffs they are an unknown quantity but only hit a few publications on the face of it. The Sunday Times prints the Mag in Bligty and ships it over on a Wednesday - thats going to be interesting. Likewise the DS and DM throw papers across the border every night - whats the deal there?

Interesting. The WTO tariff for newspapers seems to be 15% plus lots of administration costs with paying the tariffs. So if anyone moves newspapers north bound or south bound they will have to weigh up as to whether it is worth it or not. It is surely only worth it if you have large circulation and think readers will pay more.

L1011

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

According to ilevel, "their cert shows that they have 2,896 digital subscribers in comparison to 2,055 in the same period last year." So moving in the right direction, but presumably nowhere near enough yet to run a viable digital-only business...

That it is cheaper to buy the paper than subscribe is an issue. The additional daily content is not really a great draw. They don't even advertise the price or tell you what extra benefits it there are.

Irish Times 3/week is vastly cheaper than buying the paper.

IRE60

L1011 wrote: »

That it is cheaper to buy the paper than subscribe is an issue. The additional daily content is not really a great draw. They don't even advertise the price or tell you what extra benefits it there are.

Irish Times 3/week is vastly cheaper than buying the paper.

The pricing policy is an issue - eg €5 pm for 6 days and a Sunday - The Sunday Times - or €3 per Sunday for the paper - the digital and print seems to be at loggerheads with each other.

Loafing Oaf

L1011 wrote: »

That it is cheaper to buy the paper than subscribe is an issue. The additional daily content is not really a great draw. They don't even advertise the price or tell you what extra benefits it there are.

Irish Times 3/week is vastly cheaper than buying the paper.

Also, I wonder if the conventional wisdom that those interested in business news are prepared to pay for it online applies to any significant extent in the Irish context. Is it not likely that most of those types would be more interested in subscribing to the FT or whatever than to a native 'online business-focused news service' run on a shoestring...

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

I just can’t understand the duplicity involved here. The Irish Times go to great lengths to extrapolate the ROI numbers only (even though it’s called the Island of Ireland Report) in the following paragraph - which is online here

It is the Irish Times. It inflated the property bubble and bought a property website for 52 million Euro only to see the bubble burst and its circulation figures collapse in the last ten years.

The problem for the Irish Times, like most newspapers dependent on the ABC demographics, is that many of those in the ABC demographics are ahead of the curve in terms of uptake of new technologies and delivery methods. These demographics would have increasingly drifted to online news because it was more immediate, wasn't yesderday's news tomorrow and wasn't some pondscum intellect's opinion. Good journalism is hard work and expensive. Paying some dimwitted commentators to create controversy rather than paying for good journalism may have seemed like a good move (the shift from journalism to commentary seems to have started in the 1990s). It also originated when the Web was young. The Web now gives everyone the ability to publish their opinions. That unique selling point of "informed" commentary doesn't really seem so unique now.

It is also not exactly informed either. Why should the opinions and press release recycling of some non-specialist be considered more trustworthy than a specialist? The Web has increased the ability of people to get specialist and informed commentary. So what if some "technology" journalist is gushing about the latest mobile phone cover! People want to know why the Hell they can't get broadband and not recycled propaganda from telcos about how people don't really want broadband.

Then there's the whole Fake News issue and the credibilty of "journalists". Are they PR shills or journalists? The rigged 2011 presidential election showed just how biased and untrustworthy a lot of the Dublin media was when it came to telling the truth. These clowns thought that Brexit would not pass and it did. They had become propagandists for Hillary Clinton and were so, so upset when "their" candidate lost to Donald Trump. But that whole activist as "journalist" thing has been responsible for the diminished trust people have in newspapers. How can people be certain that what is being presented as "news" is unbiased? There are more sources for news these days but the Irish Times is just a provincial newspaper in a world with news available 24 hours a day.

The reason for the Irish Times' decline is this: Yesterday's news tomorrow. That and people aren't buying it because they've already read it elsewhere.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Also, I wonder if the conventional wisdom that those interested in business news are prepared to pay for it online applies to any significant extent in the Irish context.

It is s a small market in a small country. That makes it difficult to support such a publication using advertising and sales.

Is it not likely that most of those types would be more interested in subscribing to the FT or whatever than to a native 'online business-focused news service' run on a shoestring...

Specialist news publications need specialist journalists. And there is the cannibalisation of news that means that the same story will eventually appear in free news websites that are also trying to survive. The FT is great for international business news. There's only so many profile pieces of the latest local who gets a big job with Google/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter etc people can read without going meh! So what's left? FDI? Small business news? Puff pieces from businesses taking out advertising for a profile?

Getting people to pay for a publication when there's so much news about the same events out there is quite difficult. It is even more difficult in a small market such as Ireland.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

Indo spin 'article' on the ABC stats here. So much for independent journalism.

Muahahaha

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

According to ilevel, "their cert shows that they have 2,896 digital subscribers in comparison to 2,055 in the same period last year." So moving in the right direction, but presumably nowhere near enough yet to run a viable digital-only business...

Wow that is a really low level of subs for a business specific newspaper, you'd imagine they would need at least 10,000 to keep their head above water. The SBP does have a niche in Irish business that the FT will never fill- if you're in business in Ireland there are often certain nuggets of Irish specific business information in the SBP that you won't find in print elsewhere. So they really ought to be doing better than a palty 2,896 subs but as said in previous posts their pricing strategy seems to be all over the place.

jmcc wrote: »

The reason for the Irish Times' decline is this: Yesterday's news tomorrow. That and people aren't buying it because they've already read it elsewhere.

Regards...jmcc

Isnt that the problem with all print news at this stage? I was in a cafe last week and flicked through a free Indo. In the entire paper there was two small articles of interest to me. The other 10 or so of interest I had read the day before online. I literally put the paper down less than 3 minutes after I'd picked it up. As to why anyone with an internet connection would pay €2.30 for that is beyond me at this stage.