The decline continues

JTMan · 28-07-2020 12:28pm

J_M_G wrote: »

Yeah it's true that people had been expecting many to disappear by this point but I think they underestimate just how big their margins were, and just how much fat they have/had to trim. You do run into a wall of fixed costs eventually, but it is remarkable how long a company can survive on seemingly nothing but fumes.

Exactly. The advent of the "ghost newspaper" has "saved" newspapers but only in name. Many newspapers are a relic of their former self. Content is increasingly taken from newswires, taken from other publications in enlarged media groups (often from the UK) and in some cases taken from bots. There is little original investigative high quality content left. Page numbers, article counts and the number of journalists have all decreased significantly.

Newspapers are kept alive thanks to hiking cover prices, habitual elderly purchases, government advertising, supermarket advertising and never ending cuts.

In many cases, sales are down 70% but the show still goes on. Can't think of any other industry where this would be the case.

You can drive content costs down to near-zero. You can drive printing costs down as you reduce size. Distribution costs are 'fixed' but as more shops choose not to sell newspapers distribution costs will decline.

The show will go on for the ghost newspapers for some time to come if they manage costs correctly.

On the positive side, The Irish Times will have a bright digital only future. The Indo will probably have a digital only future. But difficult to see much light beyond that.

Loafing Oaf · 28-07-2020 12:44pm

IRE60 wrote: »

It was always about the margin. Just to retreat a bit the Sunday Trib was saddled with debt, big ticket on that paper at the time. So INM used it to block the Sunday Times and cash strip the business.

I was (vaguely) aware of all that but IMO the point about the Tribune is that it was making (significant?) losses on a circulation of IIRC 60K+ at the time it closed. The roughly comparable Sunday Business Post was the last time I checked selling not much more than a third of that yet is somehow still breathing...

J_M_G · 28-07-2020 1:24pm

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

The immigrants who live here just want to earn enough to pay for rent/mortgage, household bills and to send their kids to school, so blaming them for the decline of provincial towns, when often they help to keep teacher numbers and community organisations healthy, is a bit rich.

[deleted due to it being baseless, off-topic ranting]

EDIT: It most certainly was not baseless or off-topic. And calling it a "rant" is just you poisoning the well.

But the fact remains, their presence IS changing the makeup of towns all across the nation. Culturally, politically, socially, linguistically, religiously. In ways big and small. This is an empirical fact. This causes the identity of a town to get blown out. To literally become "diverse". Diverse means no majority or pre-eminent culture or consistent expectation of ways of being and interacting with your community. So it's understandable that this would cause, on average, people to identify less with "their town" and by extension, with what's going on within it. Aka, local news.

So we don't buy our local paper because... well why bother? We don't recognize it as reflecting "us" anymore. Because there is no "us". So hello declining newspaper sales.

Now before anyone strawmans any of that, I think it's actually a fairly minor reason for the decline of local newspaper sales. It's a factor, but also well down the list of reasons. The main reason is that Facebook took over the social and voyeuristic element, the quality of writing is atrocious, the price too high (and rising), the internet took the jobs ads, the real estate listings and increasingly the obituries, and nobody actually cares about some random guy you don't know who was up in district court and got a €30 fine for not picking up his dog's poop.

An Ciarraioch wrote: »

No, blame planners for taking footfall out of town centres through suburban shopping complexes, and online websites for diverting commerce from local independent stores.

I don't disagree with any of this. But please don't get me started on the midwits known as local council planning committees or I'll derail this thread for good

jmcc · 28-07-2020 1:40pm

JTMan wrote: »

Exactly. The advent of the "ghost newspaper" has "saved" newspapers but only in name. Many newspapers are a relic of their former self. Content is increasingly taken from newswires, taken from other publications in enlarged media groups (often from the UK) and in some cases taken from bots. There is little original investigative high quality content left. Page numbers, article counts and the number of journalists have all decreased significantly.

It used to be funny to see the Polly Filla and Phil Space "technology" journalists doing this kind of stuff with articles that were basically rehashes of something from Wired or some other US publication back in the day. Since then, the costs have made it much cheaper to use wire content. It was evident that the whole newspaper business was drifting towards using filler while cutting back on original content.

On the positive side, The Irish Times will have a bright digital only future. The Indo will probably have a digital only future. But difficult to see much light beyond that.

The Irish Times sold off its ireland.com domain name. That was a category killer domain name and it then rebranded as "irishtimes.com" to ape the New York Times. The reality is that it is a provincial newspaper with delusions of grandeur. Like most provincial newspapers, it has a geographically limited audience. The Independent's idea of what constitutes premium content is a bit of a laugh. At the heart of the problem for both newspapers is the fact that the opinion columnists are generally the first to go behind the paywall. That actually loses readers and sends the readership of the opinion columnists into a tailspin because they no longer have the audience and people have to pay for what was once free. I'm not sure that the IT has such a bright digital future given that it has a track record of disaster (apart from the sale of Ireland.com) on the Web.

The Independent seems to be trying to pull a race to the bottom with pricing. This is similar to what Murdoch did with the Redtops in the UK but it may not be effective with the Independent.

Regards...jmcc

J_M_G · 28-07-2020 1:48pm

jmcc wrote: »

I'm not sure that the IT has such a bright digital future given that it has a track record of disaster (apart from the sale of Ireland.com) on the Web.

The Independent seems to be trying to pull a race to the bottom with pricing. This is similar to what Murdoch did with the Redtops in the UK but it may not be effective with the Independent.

Regards...jmcc

Not to mention they both have very suspicious claims about their true subscription numbers. "Inflated" is putting it mildly.

I don't actually think either will bridge the digital gap in the long-run enough to survive. Monsters like the NYT will (plus WaPo, WSJ and maybe one or two others). But none of the irish papers will make it. RTE will be subsidised by the state and provide any relevant national news coverage. All the rest is opinion or investigative and will be done for zero cost and more effectively by aspiring indie journalists with a twitter account and a patreon page. It's already happening.

flogen · 28-07-2020 1:49pm

Please stick to the topic of the decline of traditional media and avoid using this thread to spout your uninformed assumptions about people.

J_M_G · 28-07-2020 1:52pm

flogen wrote: »

Please stick to the topic of the decline of traditional media and avoid using this thread to spout your uninformed assumptions about people.

It was highly relevant to the discussion of traditional media decline and I can assure you I am far from uninformed on the topic. Your bias is showing. But I'll refrain from explicitly political commentary.

jmcc · 28-07-2020 1:54pm

J_M_G wrote: »

Not to mention they both have very suspicious claims about their true subscription numbers. "Inflated" is putting it mildly.

The problem is not with the true subscription figures but in the lack of analysis and breakdown of those figures. Say a well known paper claims that it has 58K digital subscriptions. That may well be true. But the breakdown of those subscriptions can provide indications of the money made from the subscriptions. How many were one day/weekly subscriptions? How many were introductory offers that were not taken up? How many were annual subscriptions? The real blood trail statistic is the number of new subscriptions versus the number of dropped subscriptions.

Regards...jmcc

J_M_G · 28-07-2020 2:02pm

jmcc wrote: »

The problem is not with the true subscription figures but in the lack of analysis and breakdown of those figures. Say a well known paper claims that it has 58K digital subscriptions. That may well be true. But the breakdown of those subscriptions can provide indications of the money made from the subscriptions. How many were one day/weekly subscriptions? How many were introductory offers that were not taken up? How many were annual subscriptions? The real blood trail statistic is the number of new subscriptions versus the number of dropped subscriptions.

Regards...jmcc

Right. When they don't break out the details in the quarterly reports, I think it's fair to assume the quality of those subs is not the highest.

JTMan · 28-07-2020 2:06pm

The main problem with the Irish Times sub numbers is the sub numbers include free student subs without breaking this out. That said, it is crystal clear that IT digital subs are growing at an impressive rate and on a sustained basis.

Meanwhile, the Guardian have an article entitled 'Local journalism is on its knees' today here.

Idbatterim · 28-07-2020 2:12pm

Never once saw an article on the outrageous welfare state pre covid, giving away free prime location a energy rated homes ... while many woukdnt qualify for them and will do massuve commutes from houseshares etc ..

J_M_G · 28-07-2020 2:21pm

Yeah I think I'm actually gonna nope out from this thread and site after having my post above partially deleted by that overzealous mod. Being edited like that has left a sour taste in my mouth, especially when I was on-topic and making sincere effort to be perfectly civil. Merely replying to a previous poster who pushed his own liberal opinion, but I notice his post wasn't deleted for being "uninformed" or called "ranting" or "spouting". Very disappointing, but not especially surprising if I'm honest.

If I was turning the thread into an off-topic political thing that would perhaps merit a warning, but I wasn't doing that. Deleting posts is just... gross. Perhaps this will be deleted too? I bet it will. Oh well. Maybe some introspection about why boards is declining is necessary? How ironic. Perhaps a new thread on the decline of traditional forums like Boards.ie is in order?

Anyway, I'll leave it to you guys. I was hoping to get into some more discussion and theories I have about what's coming down the pipe for the traditional media sector. It's an interesting topic.

Bye!

flogen · 28-07-2020 2:26pm

J_M_G wrote: »

It was highly relevant to the discussion of traditional media decline and I can assure you I am far from uninformed on the topic. Your bias is showing. But I'll refrain from explicitly political commentary.

No it wasn’t. You were ranting about the immigration system and making baseless generalisations about the culture and IQ of groups of the population.

Your argument about the impact diversity is having on the media remained even after I took a sizeable chunk of your post out, which shows how much of it was irrelevant.

Please stay on topic.

L1011 · 29-07-2020 8:20am

So a lot of the freefall in sales since March was blamed on retailers closing. As those reopen I wonder how many will resume selling newspapers at all

My local train station shop has not taken papers back for instance

IRE60 · 29-07-2020 3:11pm

L1011 wrote: »

So a lot of the freefall in sales since March was blamed on retailers closing. As those reopen I wonder how many will resume selling newspapers at all

My local train station shop has not taken papers back for instance

Inspired by that comment 'freefall in sales' by L1011, I pealed back the curtains to investigate that.

The numbers and pretty tables behind this are on the usual platform which I can't mention as the sword of damocles hovers after my last bad.

The one thing -News UK have not reported since February as they are allowed to do under the ABC Covid rules - and that's a fair chunk of numbers missing from the analysis. However, my 'theory' is that they are no different to other papers under the microscope.

Briefly its shows that between February and June the mornings are down 7% and the Sundays down 2%. Not exactly freefall it would transpire.

JTMan · 29-07-2020 3:28pm

IRE60 wrote: »

The numbers and pretty tables behind this are on the usual platform which I can't mention as the sword of damocles hovers after my last bad.

IRE60 wrote: »

Briefly its shows that between February and June the mornings are down 7% and the Sundays down 2%. Not exactly freefall it would transpire.

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.

Loafing Oaf · 29-07-2020 3:33pm

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...

JTMan · 29-07-2020 3:48pm

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.

IRE60 · 30-07-2020 7:10pm

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 · 30-07-2020 7:18pm

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.

Loafing Oaf · 30-07-2020 7:44pm

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

Beechwoodspark · 30-07-2020 7:50pm

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

John_Rambo · 30-07-2020 9:57pm

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.

Gloomtastic! · 30-07-2020 11:14pm

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.

dohboy · 19-08-2020 4:52pm

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

IRE60 · 19-08-2020 5:15pm

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 · 20-08-2020 6:37pm

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

Gloomtastic! · 20-08-2020 10:35pm

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.

JTMan · 22-08-2020 7:43am

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.

jmcc · 23-08-2020 8:09am

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

IRE60 · 04-09-2020 8:33am

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

dohboy · 04-09-2020 1:30pm

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

JTMan · 04-09-2020 1:53pm

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.

JTMan · 17-10-2020 8:22am

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?

Loafing Oaf · 30-10-2020 1:21am

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

Gloomtastic! · 30-10-2020 12:41pm

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:

StackSteevens · 30-10-2020 12:59pm

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.

IRE60 · 06-11-2020 11:02am

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/

jmcc · 06-11-2020 2:46pm

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

JTMan · 06-11-2020 2:54pm

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.

IRE60 · 06-11-2020 3:00pm

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!

jmcc · 07-11-2020 7:33pm

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

jmcc · 07-11-2020 7:42pm

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

dohboy · 26-01-2021 5:37pm

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

DrSerious3 · 19-05-2021 4:03pm

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

IRE60 · 19-05-2021 4:37pm

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"

Loafing Oaf · 22-05-2021 11:57pm

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/hugh-linehan-reports-of-the-death-of-the-newspaper-have-been-exaggerated-1.4570569
Hugh Linehan ruminates on the future of printed newspapers, points out that they have outlasted many of the prophecies (and indeed prophets) of doom

Most interesting bit is this quote from Peter Vandermeersch of Mediahuis Ireland on their strategy for the coming years: “we think, sooner or later, maybe five, maybe seven, maybe 12 years, we go to a system here in Ireland where we have very big and important Saturday and Sunday papers in print, combined with digital during the week. That’s basically the whole strategy of the company, to prepare for that future.”

Gloomtastic! · 23-05-2021 5:11pm

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/hugh-linehan-reports-of-the-death-of-the-newspaper-have-been-exaggerated-1.4570569
Hugh Linehan ruminates on the future of printed newspapers, points out that they have outlasted many of the prophecies (and indeed prophets) of doom

Most interesting bit is this quote from Peter Vandermeersch of Mediahuis Ireland on their strategy for the coming years: “we think, sooner or later, maybe five, maybe seven, maybe 12 years, we go to a system here in Ireland where we have very big and important Saturday and Sunday papers in print, combined with digital during the week. That’s basically the whole strategy of the company, to prepare for that future.”

Or maybe two Peter. It’s what I do now.

27-05-2021 12:52pm

Most content now are just recycyled press releases, it is very poor. I read a story on a radio website re a crime and it was just a copy of the garda press release.

dohboy · 31-05-2021 12:05pm

Maybe don't get your news from a radio station's website then? Or at least have zero expectations if you do.

The decline continues

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