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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

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JTMan

Okay, so if it is not the Business Post being disorganised, then it is deliberate, and why would they withhold the information if they are still paying the ABC, the old explanation is the figures must have been poor.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

Okay, so if it is not the Business Post being disorganised, then it is deliberate, and why would they withhold the information if they are still paying the ABC, the old explanation is the figures must have been poor.

Yea, good point. There may be a dispute in the figures? But its not a shock (the numbers) to a publisher. They submit the numbers and the ABC verify.

Yea, many a slip twixt cup and lip - something happened in the last 4 weeks.

L1011

How much longer can the print Echo survive on that? They'd be fine figures for a weekly, but...

dohboy

Most of these papers have gone up in price year-on-year which isn't going to last forever but does give them some breathing room, and is never factored in here.

JTMan

L1011 wrote: »

How much longer can the print Echo survive on that? They'd be fine figures for a weekly, but...

Yeah, I've being very surprised that the Irish Times have not made any singing cuts to the regional publications that they purchased. I bet they are losing money. Surely at some stage, as the decline continues, The Irish Times will need to make business decisions like cutting the number of number of days a week or closing some of the regionals.

IRE60

L1011 wrote: »

How much longer can the print Echo survive on that? They'd be fine figures for a weekly, but...

Really all depends on the costs attributed to it. It could have a b/e of 3,000 copies! So it might have a bit to go yet.

JTMan

IRE60 wrote: »

Really all depends on the costs attributed to it. It could have a b/e of 3,000 copies! So it might have a bit to go yet.

The cost figure can keep declining as a newspaper cuts journalists, cuts page numbers and resort to copy and paste journalism from wires, bots and other sources.

The term 'ghost newspaper' is used often the US to describe local newspapers that are essentially dead but kept going in name only with little or no real content. The ghost newspapers are aimed at those that keep buying out of habit and advertisers that keep advertising because they have to such as government planning bodies.

Muahahaha

Things not going too well at the Sun either

The Sun recorded a loss of £68m last year amid falling print sales and the enormous cost of phone-hacking claims against its parent company from figures including Sir Elton John and Heather Mills.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers, which publishes the Sun and retains liability for the activities of the News of the World, spent an enormous £54m on legal fees and damages related to the illegal interception of voicemails.

The figures, which cover the 12 months to July 2019, were revealed in accounts filed this weekend. They show that more than a decade after the phone-hacking scandal began, the company is still spending an eighth of its revenue dealing with the fallout, as new cases involving the likes of Prince Harry continue to be filed at the high court.

The Sun remains the biggest-selling print newspaper in the UK but is on track to lose that title to the Daily Mail at some point this year, as its paid circulation heads below 1.1m copies a day. This month it appointed a new leadership team of Victoria Newton as editor and Keith Poole as her deputy, with a focus on driving traffic to its website in competition with MailOnline

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/23/the-sun-records-huge-loss-amid-falling-print-sales-phone-hacking-damages

Heading for under a million readers a day in a nation of 55 odd million when it is only a paltry 25p anyway says a lot.

L1011

Muahahaha wrote: »

Things not going too well at the Sun either

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/23/the-sun-records-huge-loss-amid-falling-print-sales-phone-hacking-damages

Heading for under a million readers a day in a nation of 55 odd million when it is only a paltry 25p anyway says a lot.

Is is not 55p or so? The headline price is something like "25Pcheaper than the Express" or similar

JTMan

Reach PLC (Daily Mirror, Star and Express newspapers) released their results today too.

- 47m monthly readers but only 1m of these are registered
- Targeting higher yield per advert online
- Reach said print advertising revenue fell by 20 per cent last year to £152.5m
- 83% of revenue still comes from print despite huge online audience. Once again, shows the difficulties of living off advertising online.
- More job cuts last year to keep the print ship afloat: “significant cost efficiencies” last year, including £12m in structural cost savings and “incremental acquisition synergies” of £16m, with a number of staffing cuts last year.
- A 4.5 per cent drop in circulation revenue was “part-mitigated” by cover price increases and “availability investment”, the company said.

Press Gazette article here. FT article here.

JTMan

Press Gazette has an interesting article comparing newspaper circulation over the last 20 years.

Circulation is down 65% on average over the last 20 years and drops have been more significant in the last 10 years than the prior 10 years.

Biggest drops include Sunday People which is down 91%, Sunday Mirror down 82% and the Daily Mirror down 80%.

When one looks at this over a 20 year period, it clear to see that the journey of print into the sunset has come a long way.

IRE60

That’s very interesting and if you look at the papers that had a constant presence in the Irish Market in ‘98, ‘08 and ‘18 (I use those years as the 19 figures are seriously depleted).

In the morning the ‘98 to ’18 decline is -14%. The ’98 to ’18 decline is -44%.

In the Sunday the ‘98 to ’18 decline is -1%. The ’98 to ’18 decline is -48%.

And the winner is.......

NotW/SoS -66.93%
Evening Echo -68.28%
Evening Herald -72.54%
The People -88.38%

But, we did ‘better’ than the UK!

JTMan

A detailed and brilliant account of the state of consolidating and declining US newspaper industry here.

IRE60

Great article. They don't spare the blushes, some very frightening stats there.

IRE60

You have to use the link below as it somehow allows access to a membership area for this article.

https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/03/02/barclays-1-end-of-empire/content.html?sig=-2EkzJSlcOhaRI041fVwnFSrM-RbYbqfwvVRpbq_RMM

Its a little off message but it gives a background into the Barclays Bros and their ailing empire. You can download the audio in the article to keep you company on your commute perhaps at a later time.

IRE60

The ABC are preparing for circulation sh1tting the bed!
https://www.abc.org.uk/images/Coronavirus_How_your_ABC_circulation_may_be_affected.pdf

doublej

Does The Irish Times have a death wish?

I don’t believe that the income from her digital subscriptions comes anywhere near meeting the outgoings,yet the physical print offering is rapidly challenging the concept of value for money. The paper on Monday, at an RSP of €2.30 had a mere 20 pages.
If the loyal readers of the paper, whether home delivered or bought in a shop ceased purchasing, the consequences for the IT would be ruinous.

jmcc

doublej wrote: »

Does The Irish Times have a death wish?

I don’t believe that the income from her digital subscriptions comes anywhere near meeting the outgoings,yet the physical print offering is rapidly challenging the concept of value for money. The paper on Monday, at an RSP of €2.30 had a mere 20 pages.
If the loyal readers of the paper, whether home delivered or bought in a shop ceased purchasing, the consequences for the IT would be ruinous.

It would not be unthinkable to see a shift from daily print editions to daily digital-only editions and a Saturday print and digital edition.

The reporting of digital subscriptions is also exceedingly problematic for newspapers in general in that for the purposes of reporting, a digital subscription has no time period. That makes it difficult to ascertain if it is a yearly, monthly or short-term subscription. There have also been reports of large businesses cancelling their subscriptions to print editions and being offered replacement digital subscriptions.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

The Irish Times had 24,389 digital subscriptions on average from July to December 2019 excluding free subscriptions and the basic package. This is up from 18,903 in the comparable period in the prior year. Including free subs and the standard edition there are about 80,000 digital Irish Times subscriptions. The real number of paying digital subscriptions is somewhere in between these numbers.

The numbers are growing at a good rate. The costs attached to a digital edition are tiny versus the print edition.

But yeah still today, the print edition brings in a lot more revenue than the digital edition but things are gradually shifting.

Yeah, the paper just has 20 pages and is a mear relic of its former self. The main audience for the paper these days is the elderly who continue to purchase but their audience is literally dying.

jmcc wrote: »

There have also been reports of large businesses cancelling their subscriptions to print editions and being offered replacement digital subscriptions.

Yeah, I heard of a large Irish company that cancelled all their print copies as part of their carbon reduction plan and replaced the editions with digital editions.

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

The Irish Times had 24,389 digital subscriptions on average from July to December 2019 excluding free subscriptions and the basic package. This is up from 18,903 in the comparable period in the prior year. Including free subs and the standard edition there are about 80,000 digital Irish Times subscriptions. The real number of paying digital subscriptions is somewhere in between these numbers.

The problem is that there's no breakdown on the duration of the subscriptions. Each year's subscriptions would be a mix of short-term and annual subscriptions. Without knowing the split, it is difficult to know how effective the digital strategy has been. There is also the level of discounting (partially the cost of acquiring the subscription) which is rarely mentioned and the subscription tier. When it comes to looking at subscription stats, most people just see the total subscriptions figure.

The numbers are growing at a good rate. The costs attached to a digital edition are tiny versus the print edition.

Costs are lower on the distribution side of things but going digital shifts a publication from being a "Yesterday's news tomorrow" operation to one with a 24 hour news cycle.

But yeah still today, the print edition brings in a lot more revenue than the digital edition but things are gradually shifting.

One of the biggest mistakes the IT made with its first paywall was getting a bunch of muppets to work out the strategy. They had no clue of what was happening on the Web and basically gave away millions in revenue to RTE and the Independent because Google introduced Adsense PPC at the time that the IT went behind a paywall. That paywall was a complete failure. That easy money market is long gone and people often use Adblockers to block PPC advertising. With Ireland.com, it had a category killer domain name but the the same clue-free management hit it hard again and it had to sell/lease the domain name. At least it made a decent profit on that investment.

Yeah, the paper just has 20 pages and is a mear relic of its former self. The main audience for the paper these days is the elderly who continue to purchase but their audience is literally dying.

It is a sad state of affairs but the IT had a chance to evolve. The problem was that it began to believe its own press releases and the management seemed to think that they were immune from any economic effects. At the heart of it was something quite simple. Their thinking and actions were those of management rather than publishers. Publishers tend to be ruthless feckers or they don't survive.

Yeah, I heard of a large Irish company that cancelled all their print copies as part of their carbon reduction plan and replaced the editions with digital editions.

The Covid pandemic may also hit the bulks. With cafes and restaurants closed, there are not many places to dump them. And quarantines and social distancing will hit much of the old school journalism that involves talking to people face to face.

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

Latest ABC newspaper stats available. UK numbers here. Ireland in uk numbers here.

Morning papers down 14% and Sundays down 10%.

Meanwhile, Celtic Media have done some temp layoffs.

JTMan

The WSJ have an interesting article on the effects on Coronavirus on the newspaper industry here (paywall).

IRE60

Indian Info graphic from a hospital group - very frightening for the industry if latched on to:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ET1YSb1XQAUAAB8?format=jpg&name=large

But the imma have hit back

https://www.inma.org/blogs/earl/post.cfm/zero-incidents-of-covid-19-transmission-from-print-surfaces

JTMan

Interesting. One would think that if money can contain the virus, that newspapers could also contain the virus of touched by a other people but the risk is probably exceptionally low.

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

Interesting. One would think that if money can contain the virus, that newspapers could also contain the virus of touched by a other people but the risk is probably exceptionally low.

It should, theoretically, cause a spike in digital subscriptions. It may also have people reconsidering whether they need to read the wibbling of columnists since most newspapers shifted away from news towards commentary in the 1990s. The terrible thing about this pandemic is that it hits the newspaper reading demographics hardest and many will have scaled back their trips to the shops and newsagents. It could have resulted in daily sales being off by at least 25%. Might be an interesting article for a freelancer to compare sales from the Spanish Flu pandemic with the C19 pandemic and adjust for greater newspaper readership a hundred years ago. There may be (thinking in terms of Stats/Big Data) a shift from newspaper readership to radio listenership that will parallel a shift from print to digital over the next few months.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Almost on cue:
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0325/1126320-local-newspaper-job-losses/

Regards...jmcc

IRE60

Yep.... some blow and just the start. I'd doubt the phone hasn't rung in an Ad department in the last 7 days - except to cancel the Easter campaign.

L1011

My local paper is massively down on pages this week and basically only have ads from supermarkets, the state and local politicians left. Don't think there was any district court action to report on which would be part of it

They've massively increased the amount of puzzles as filler but in the current circumstances I'd see that as quite welcome!

JTMan

jmcc wrote: »

parallel a shift from print to digital over the next few months.

With some people having a lot more time on their hands, during this crisis, it is plausible that digital subs will increase. People have more time to read quality publications.

Will this crisis cause a long-term shift in behavior? Newspaper sales are already down 60-90% over the last 20 years, those that are left buying newspapers are mainly the elderly, who might not be interested in digital offerings.

That said, at the margins, it might change some behaviour, even if it is 5% of the pre-crisis newspaper base switch to digital, that could be the final nail for some publications.

IRE60

here's dedication for you!

https://www.inma.org/blogs/ideas/post.cfm/the-brave-face-of-joongang-ilbo-s-covid-19-response