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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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IRE60

Not trying to be evasive or even apologetic for print – it’s a difficult one to answer with any certainty – for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, all of the ‘indigenous*’ Irish media have abandoned the auditing process since 2018 and therefore there is no data available on their current numbers.

Secondly, News UK used a rule in the ABC registration brought in last March which allowed them to still be audited but not have to publish those figures. They are still using that rule 14 months on.

So, at a stroke, last March about 50% of the Sunday market in Ireland (of those that reported at that point) stopped reporting numbers and about 35% of the daily market stopped as well.

However, of the 12 papers selling in the Irish Market (RoI) and who are still part of the ABC audit process - they are back about 9% - which is in line, more or less, with their trajectory pre-covid.

I hear that weekday sales have taken a bit of a beating, but weekend sales are very strong in certain brands. The whole ‘going to work’ cycle has shifted the dynamic in retail from town to local and indeed buying a paper in the morning to, perhaps, not buying one!

*hateful expression - but seemingly widely understood and beats (marginally) the opposite group the "foreign media"

DrSerious3

How was the pandemic for print? Has it slowed the inevitable decline?

dohboy

Good piece in the FT about the decline of local papers in America, how they are being hoovered up by hedge funds, and the nascent fight back by staff (mainly searching for benign loados to buy them as opposed to asset strippers). https://www.ft.com/content/5c22075c-f1af-431d-bf39-becf9c54758b

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

Yea, good point. C19 and Election would be a driver. I worked in a business heavily reliant on repeat business (renewals). The word 'churn' still leaves me with sleepless nights!

It is a terrifying metric.

It should be possible to graph the effects of the Covid lockdowns on print circulations and digital subs if the newspapers published the numbers. Took a look at the Irish Times "technology" section recently and apart from the odd bit of local news and the usual Polly Filla/Phil Space articles, there seemed to be more wire service content. What will be interesting to see is whether RTE's new news website with a lot more wire service content will compete directly with the newspapers for the same digital audience. It might be a repeat of the Irish Times' failed first paywall when it surrendered the Irish news market to RTE and the Indo because they were not behind a paywall.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

JTMan wrote: »

No doubt that the elections (and Covid spare time) have played a part, but there has being a clear trend for the last few years towards paying for digital subs for quality publications, which will continue long after the elections and Covid. FT, Economist, NYT etc are all doing exceptionally well with digital sub numbers.

Yep. They all have large and quite well defined markets. The NYTimes market is quite large and the others are specialised. The problem is where the market is small and the publication is generalised (Irish Times/Indo etc). Event-driven spikes are common but they are rarely sustained. Most of the Irish publications rarely provide a breakdown on the age or duration of the digital subscriptions and it makes their claimed subscription figures less reliable than others.

Regards...jmcc

IRE60

jmcc wrote: »

Yep but is it an even-driven boost (US elections) and will those subs renew?

Regards...jmcc

Yea, good point. C19 and Election would be a driver. I worked in a business heavily reliant on repeat business (renewals). The word 'churn' still leaves me with sleepless nights!

JTMan

jmcc wrote: »

Yep but is it an even-driven boost (US elections) and will those subs renew?

No doubt that the elections (and Covid spare time) have played a part, but there has being a clear trend for the last few years towards paying for digital subs for quality publications, which will continue long after the elections and Covid. FT, Economist, NYT etc are all doing exceptionally well with digital sub numbers.

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

Good numbers from the New York Times : https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/11/for-the-first-time-the-new-york-times-digital-subscriptions-generate-more-revenue-than-its-print-ones/

Yep but is it an even-driven boost (US elections) and will those subs renew?

Regards...jmcc

IRE60

Good numbers from the New York Times : https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/11/for-the-first-time-the-new-york-times-digital-subscriptions-generate-more-revenue-than-its-print-ones/

StackSteevens

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

When in doubt, commission a report. :rolleyes:

I see that the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, is a member - can anyone remind me how many millions his time in charge ended up costing the Scott Trust?

Putting him on the board is akin to putting the Captain of the Titanic in charge of the Howth lifeboat.

Gloomtastic!

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/media-critical-to-ireland-s-democracy-says-taoiseach-1.4394892

Never fear, the Future of Media Commission is here to save us

When in doubt, commission a report. :rolleyes:

Loafing Oaf

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/media-critical-to-ireland-s-democracy-says-taoiseach-1.4394892

Never fear, the Future of Media Commission is here to save us

JTMan

INM are to stop "investing" in the Herald website and remove their segregated news team.

Translation please? Herald is fecked, website is a waste of resources and the newspaper will just republish Indo articles with tiny customisation?

JTMan

dohboy wrote: »

Profits up by a fifth at publisher of Irish Daily Star

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/profit-up-by-a-fifth-at-publisher-of-irish-daily-star-1.4346544?mode=amp

If anyone every wants to understand how newspapers are still profitable then Independent Star is a good example.

Revenues were once 30 million EUR in their hay day. Circulation was 110k in their hay day.

Now ... turnover was down YoY from €16.1 million to €14.8 million. Their circulation has declined to about 32k.

So how are they still here? Cuts, cuts and then more cuts. In 1 year alone staff numbers went from 78 to 72. Other cuts include production cuts which means less pages and less content.

Ghost newspapers, like the Irish Daily Star, are being kept alive in a coma type state. If Reach gets its hands on the Irish Daily Star you can bet their will be more cuts and more copy and paste content from the UK.

Cuts can only go so far but might still have some distance to go.

Interesting that the directors are "projecting cashflows" for 2020 which might suggest that revenue has dropped much further in 2020.

dohboy

Profits up by a fifth at publisher of Irish Daily Star

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/profit-up-by-a-fifth-at-publisher-of-irish-daily-star-1.4346544?mode=amp

IRE60

Very interesting interview from the Media Show on BBC. Mark Thompson - from C4 then DG at the BBC and then a transition to CEO of New York Times.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m5k7

jmcc

Another article on GPT-3 but this time from MIT's Technology Review:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/22/1007539/gpt3-openai-language-generator-artificial-intelligence-ai-opinion/

Regards...jmcc

JTMan

Very interesting developments with the new artificial intelligence system known as GPT-3 and what effects it might have for journalism.

The WSJ have an interesting article here (paywall) on potential effects.

If the price is right, there’s a good chance that GPT-3 will make major changes in our working lives. For a range of knowledge workers—news reporters, lawyers, coders and others—the introduction of systems like GPT-3 will likely shift their activities from drafting to editing. On the plus side, the biggest barrier to getting work done, the tyranny of the blank paper or the blank screen, may become much rarer. It’s simple enough just to keep clicking GPT-3’s “generate” button until something halfway usable appears.

The tyranny of the blank screen, though, forces us to think through a problem in a way that editing does not. Human nature probably means that people will often be more intent on massaging an AI’s output to the point that it looks acceptable than on doing their own work to sort through ambiguous data and conflicting arguments. Like GPS navigation, which started as just a tool but has reduced our engagement with the act of navigating, AI language generators may start by sparing us labor but soon spare us thought.

Gloomtastic!

dohboy wrote: »

can you point me to any threads, or posts even, in praise of Irish newspapers/media on here? I couldn't find any

The thread is about the factual decline of newspapers circulation/readership here and overseas. It’s not meant to be a advert for the media.

Please stop trolling.

dohboy

IRE60 wrote: »

You'd find that a good few people contributing here either work or have worked directly in the industry or in the periphery of the business.

Troll through the posts here. There's very little rubbing of hands on the back of falling sales or indeed job losses.

can you point me to any threads, or posts even, in praise of Irish newspapers/media on here? I couldn't find any

IRE60

dohboy wrote: »

This place really dies when posters can't rub their thighs over falling sales and job losses, huh

You'd find that a good few people contributing here either work or have worked directly in the industry or in the periphery of the business.

Troll through the posts here. There's very little rubbing of hands on the back of falling sales or indeed job losses.

dohboy

This place really dies when posters can't rub their thighs over falling sales and job losses, huh

Gloomtastic!

IRE60 wrote: »

The year on year is always going to be depressing! The interesting one there was the FT. The perennial question in paper buying who is the 'primary' purchaser. In the case of the FT it's unquestionably 'the office'.

Lads in KPMG and MOPS etc have disbursed to leafy suburbs and I'd say they are fcuked if they are going to reach into the trousers for the FT every day on their own bat!

All staff at KPMG get an online sub to the Indo and IT. Not sure about FT.

John_Rambo

Not entirely on thread but Argos are pulling the press on the catalogue. A serious decision after a lot of meetings I'd imagine with a big impact on the print trade.

Beechwoodspark

Am I right in saying the indo app has now dropped the premium articles wall?

I seem to be able to access all articles on the app without any sub

Loafing Oaf

JTMan wrote: »

At least the FT can somewhat rely on their growing digital subscriptions

I still have a working FT login from my old media analysis job which I was laid of from about four years ago. Seemingly would cost me nearly a euro a day if I was paying for it but kind of wasted on me cos I have feck all interest in business:p

JTMan

IRE60 wrote: »

The year on year is always going to be depressing! The interesting one there was the FT. The perennial question in paper buying who is the 'primary' purchaser. In the case of the FT it's unquestionably 'the office'.

Lads in KPMG and MOPS etc have disbursed to leafy suburbs and I'd say they are fcuked if they are going to reach into the trousers for the FT every day on their own bat!

Yeah and difficult to see how businesses will resume FT purchases in the future when staff only occasionally go into the old fashioned office. At least the FT can somewhat rely on their growing digital subscriptions but redundancies at the FT show how even the FT still has print dependencies.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

Yeah, but some publications are in freefall as your great stats suggest:
--> The FT is down 26% YoY which is probably due to office been closed and i am told that even some offices that reopen are no longer getting newspapers delivered due to Covid.
--> The Irish Daily Star is down 18% YoY. Less sport has to be playing a role.
--> Double digit declines for Express, Mail and Mirror.

The year on year is always going to be depressing! The interesting one there was the FT. The perennial question in paper buying who is the 'primary' purchaser. In the case of the FT it's unquestionably 'the office'.

Lads in KPMG and MOPS etc have disbursed to leafy suburbs and I'd say they are fcuked if they are going to reach into the trousers for the FT every day on their own bat!

JTMan

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

Anyone know when the circulation report for the first half of 2020 is due?
Although I suppose if INM are still opting out it will be of less interest...

IT have left the ABC audits too so there will be no report unfortunately.

Loafing Oaf

Anyone know when the circulation report for the first half of 2020 is due?
Although I suppose if INM are still opting out it will be of less interest...