nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

The decline continues

IRE60

Via the Campaign site - report on the worsening state of print. (Cant find it on Neilsons' site). Some of the budget cuts are savage:

Newspaper revenues fall amid talk of joint ad sales

The national newspaper advertising slump has worsened since the Brexit vote, with revenues crashing 18% year on year in August, making it the worst-performing month of the year so far.

Print ad sales dived 14%, or £95m, in the first eight months of the year to £575m from £670m in the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen.

Newspapers got a brief respite around the Brexit referendum, when ad sales fell only 4.5% in June and 11% in July. Every other month this year has seen a fall of at least 14%.

The newspaper print ad market fell 13% in 2015 and 9% in 2014.

A number of high-profile brands abruptly slashed their print ad expenditure in favour of Facebook and other digital channels.

Tesco cut spend by 85% year on year in the first eight months of 2016 to £1.8m, O2 reduced its outlay on print ads by 45% to £4m and Marks & Spencer dropped its spend by 28% to £7m.

Worsening revenues will add to pressure on newspaper owners to consider pooling their ad sales in a single sales house in order to gain scale in their negotiations with media agencies, improve efficiency and cut costs.

News UK, Trinity Mirror, Telegraph Media Group, Guardian Media Group, DMGT and Northern & Shell have been in talks since at least May, when Campaign first reported that discussions had begun.

Steve Booth, chairman of MC&C and co-founder of BLM, has been leading the initiative, dubbed Project Juno.

Newspapers are understood to have commissioned Enders Analysis and lawyers to report on how a joint ad sales house might work and the likely obstacles emerging from a Competition

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

Loafing Oaf

Irish Daily Mail really in free fall, even by the current standards of the market. I remember asking a few years how Mail HQ could justify pouring money into an Irish edition when all it could manage saleswise was hold steady at 50K. They'd kill for 50K circulation now...

IRE60

And don't forget as well.... The Daily Star, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday print here in the Republic and ship daily editions to N.I. So, it's a two way street.

And more - last count 2,031 people buy the Express every day. Indeed, who are they - show yourselves!

L1011

Guardian is printed in NI rather than GB, dunno about the others. That may result in a different outcome depending what fudges are done for NI

Its not like there isn't plenty of print capacity here in Citywest and Cork if required! FTs paper stock may be an issue.

Who actually buys the Express in Ireland anyway? Or Telegraph for that matter.

Prince William

Why were the newspapers exempt from the vat increase? Actually why were they included in the 2011 reduction in the first place?

JTMan

Yeah, some are locally printed but the Guardian, FT, Express, Telegraph and others are imported from the UK. What happens to their distribution post Brexit?

An Ciarraioch

JTMan wrote: »

The latest ABCA UK newspapers in Ireland numbers are here. 10% YoY decline. The decline continues.

Separately, anyone any thoughts on what happens to these UK newspapers, well the ones that are imported, post a hard Brexit? Will distribution continue?

Most have Irish subsidiaries, anyway, so very few that come directly from the UK, I'd have thought?

JTMan

The latest ABCA UK newspapers in Ireland numbers are here. 10% YoY decline. The decline continues.

Separately, anyone any thoughts on what happens to these UK newspapers, well the ones that are imported, post a hard Brexit? Will distribution continue?

Muahahaha

Interesting by the Sunday Times to drop their subscription fees from €21 a month to €5. Would imagine they are picking up a lot of new subscriptions because of it.

IRE60

I see the 'press' aka the Indo press release suggested they would get 25 voluntary..... not the case on the ground!

JTMan

Yeah, it was reported on the press.

IRE60

I'm told that the redundancies in the Indo will be announced tomorrow. A reduction of 35 bodies will go through by the end of the day.

JTMan

This is going to eventually lead to INM paying out large sums of money to those who's data was breached which would include sources. This has a phone hacking compensation ring to the whole story.

IRE60

Jaw dropping story on front of SBP in the INM data breech

JTMan

Voluntary redundancies at the Irish Times (Linked to the Landmark acquisition) ... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/newspaper-group-looks-for-voluntary-redundancies-bnclw0r8t

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

ABC still have a role to play.

Absolutely. It's a definitive metric. But I think that the progress of cross platforms means that this data has to be supplemented/augmented with other data.

I see our friends on Newsbrands Ireland who published this article 'The Future of Media Planning is Integrated' are seriously on the ball! Article written in December 2013!
http://newsbrandsireland.ie/the-future-of-media-planning-is-integrated/

JTMan

Any good print advertiser will want independent sales stats, not, often bogus, readership numbers that are based on surveys.

ABC still have a role to play.

IRE60

the ABC 'metric' is probably redundant at this point -

https://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-pulls-from-amaa-audit-shifts-focus-to-readership-489248

maybe more to follow

JTMan

3-4 Month Consultation at the Sunday Business Post Might Lead to Print Closure

https://www.independent.ie/business/media/sunday-business-post-buyer-hints-at-digital-tv-future-37405930.html

Galway businessman Enda O'Coineen, the chairman of Kilcullen Kapital Partners, which recently acquired the 'Sunday Business Post' says he does not know if the Sunday newspaper will cease to print following a strategic review of the title.

JTMan

Owner of The Scotsman Johnston Press hangs up 'for sale' sign

https://news.sky.com/story/owner-of-the-scotsman-johnston-press-hangs-up-for-sale-sign-11523226

Johnston Press, the company behind a string of newspaper titles including the i, The Scotsman and The Yorkshire Post, has put itself up for sale.

The company, which like many rivals has struggled financially amid declining print readerships and ad revenues, took the decision after a strategic review of its business which began last year.

The review took place ahead of a looming deadline for the repayment of £220m in loans.

The announcement of a sale was the only option it revealed in its statement to the market.

JTMan

Reech (Express, Star and Mirror) results are out.
- Total revenue down 7%
- Advertising revenue down 20%
- 70 editorial jobs to be axed
- 2m in cost cutting this year
- 20m in cost cutting by 2020
- Profit for the year will be around 132m

Yet again cost cutting keeping a newspaper groups head above water.

More here.

JTMan

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Something similar must be true of Irish papers. I would have bet my life savings there would have been at least one more national newspaper coverage within five years of the Tribune yet they're all still here.

I was for a long time surprised to that more newspapers have not gone to the wall until I realised how 'easy' it is to cut costs in the newspaper industry. Journalist numbers keep dwindling, pages in papers keep decreasing, copy and paste journalism from other sources keeps increasing, the number of print presses is declining, distribution is consolidating ...

The cost of producing a newspaper has declined significantly but so has the quality but some people (elderly mainly) will keep buying regardless.

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

It seems close to miraculous that the Examiner and the SBP can keep going at less than 30K sales...

The SBP is boarderline profitable and has had significant reductions in revenue in recent years to just 7.1 million EUR per year in the last set of accounts. Rich owners have helped keep it alive. It would seem that the scope for further cost cutting at the SBP is getting limited.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

Article on what happens when newspapers kill print ...

It's a very interesting article and I hadn't checked in to Nieman Lab in some time! But it's not jaw dropping stuff. The engagement with a physical product that you put your hand in your pocket for will always surpass a free online offering. So no revelation there.

They majored on the fact that the Independent (print) readers didn't migrate online to the digital product - but were they ever - were they the right profile in the first place to be enthusiastic about the digital offering?

I think a telling stat emerged in the FF policy document on their theory how to keep the forth estate alive. [While it was blurred in parts and there were questionable parts - it was a start]. A print reader is worth €140 p.a. to a publisher - the digital 'user' is worth €17. However, there was no mention of the costs to the publisher to each market!

And @Loafing Oaf - I'm totally surprised that something else didn't go to the wall - and won't be if a publication does. In the immoral words of someone or other 'size isn't everything' - the SBP is (I believe) profitable and the Examiner will probably will be under the wings of the Irish Times Trust.

Edit: anyone interested in the 'production' end - this is a really interesting article. A bit like the beginnings of Amazon where there was mass fragmentation in parts. Likewise, in the slightly unclear path for publishers, there may be some clarity
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/09/newsonomics-the-washington-posts-ambitions-for-arc-have-grown-to-a-bezosian-scale/

Loafing Oaf

JTMan wrote: »

Article on what happens when newspapers kill print ...

Something similar must be true of Irish papers. I would have bet my life savings there would have been at least one more national newspaper coverage within five years of the Tribune yet they're all still here. It seems close to miraculous that the Examiner and the SBP can keep going at less than 30K sales...

IRE60

is there a borris effect in here?!

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/oct/03/telegraph-to-put-politics-business-and-rugby-news-behind-paywall

JTMan

Article on what happens when newspapers kill print ...

or American daily newspapers, the story of the last decade-plus hasn’t been about mass closures — it’s been about mass shrinkage. The pace at which newspapers are shutting down isn’t much different from what it was in the late 20th century. Instead, just about every daily paper has gotten smaller — smaller newsroom, smaller budgets, smaller print runs, smaller page counts — year after year after year. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts.

But shrinking can only go so far. In the second quarter of 2018, McClatchy’s print advertising revenue dropped 26.4 percent year over year; Gannett was down 19.1 percent, Tronc 18 percent. They’re not making new daily print newspaper subscribers anymore

There’s no Zeno’s Paradox to prevent newspapers from eventually deciding one one of two courses of action: going online-only or shutting down entirely.

NIMAN

IRE60 wrote: »

It's not a new low - it's prostitution! See the little logo at the bottom of the story : sponsored by the national lottery!

I'm fine with adverts being sponsored by companies or lotteries etc, but at least tell us they are adverts, don't hide them in their standard content to make it look like its a real story.

If the Indo was to go paid for service, I think they might fail miserably. Who would honestly pay for what they have to tell us?

Heres Johnny

Most publications are an absolute basket case these days. I said it before, but when you get better thought out arguments on boards.ie, even in after hours forum, than in what used to be respected media outlets topical issues the system is broken and it's game over.
The coverage in Irish media over some topics recently has been a disgrace and amateurish at best. Spelling mistakes, no fact checking, sensationalist claims....good riddance. I'm probably talking about the indo here to be honest. It's no better than journal.ie and other derivatives at this stage. Bye bye.

L1011

#sponcon is keeping news media going at this stage really. Most papers would be dead without it; lots of online wouldn't even exist. Should be easier to realise what it is though - the Irish Times puts a box around it in print at least.

CeilingFly

This is how far the indo has fallen.

Today has seen a horrendous tsunami in Indonesia. Hundreds, probably thousands have died.

The tragedy is headline news around the world.

The indo is leading with some utter garbage about nurses being tired.

And they wonder why they are failing.

expectationlost

NIMAN wrote: »

There's a link in the Indo's website today entitled "Who is the hardest working band in Ireland?".

I clicked on it, expecting to see U2 or The Coronas etc listed, instead this is the story:

https://www.independent.ie/storyplus/who-are-irelands-hardest-working-band-37357103.html

The bloody Lotto band from the advert. It reads like a proper story and then the last line says:
Note: The Celebrations is a fictional band, and all characters represented are fictitious.

I'm not sure if this is meant to be funny, and no mention of it being an advert.
But its a new low.

did it not have the "Sponsored by: Lotto logo" thing at the end.

it should have one at the top too.