The decline continues

IRE60 · 24-07-2019 12:03am

jmcc wrote: »

Actual subscribers versus total number of subscribers over a year including short-term subscribers? That's a really high churn rate though if ABC is the accurate source.

Regards...jmcc

Interesting point. From my dealing with them (ABC) it was every month how many papers sold divided by the period days (simply put). I'll find out how the 'subcriber' is delt with, but as JT has alluded to - I would think it's Don Quixote - mind not in balance with reality!

L1011 · 24-07-2019 12:44am

They have digital+print subs that ABC would not count twice but they might, but if that's 5k I'd be amazed

IRE60 · 24-07-2019 12:53pm

L1011 wrote: »

They have digital+print subs that ABC would not count twice but they might, but if that's 5k I'd be amazed

I'd say this offer accounts for a good few thousand!

https://www.irishtimes.com/subscribe/student/

JTMan · 24-07-2019 9:00pm

The ABC figure apparently includes only digital subscribers who receive the ePaper as part of their subscription. The Irish Times have 4 main digital packages. The epaper is not included in their cheapest digital package. I guess the 90k versus 21k difference is explained by the fact that 70k of subscribers are on the cheapest plan without an ePaper or the totally free student package.

I guess ABC only include ePaper subscribers because it is more their circulation stats are aimed at advertisers who want to know if people will see their print advert but I bet many people who get the ePaper in their package do not even look at it.

Anyway, 70k of the 90k pay between zero and 3 EUR a week.

IRE60 · 24-07-2019 10:44pm

JTMan wrote: »

The ABC figure apparently includes only digital subscribers who receive the ePaper as part of their subscription. The Irish Times have 4 main digital packages. The epaper is not included in their cheapest digital package. I guess the 90k versus 21k difference is explained by the fact that 70k of subscribers are on the cheapest plan without an ePaper or the totally free student package.

I guess ABC only include ePaper subscribers because it is more their circulation stats are aimed at advertisers who want to know if people will see their print advert but I bet many people who get the ePaper in their package do not even look at it.

Anyway, 70k of the 90k pay between zero and 3 EUR a week.

Yea, I read that earlier - the epaper is the digital static version of the paper - no other form is tolerated - so if you pay and opt out of the epaper you are not counted! I suppose it filters out the students. The epaper model is a bit past tense at this point - strange the ABC don't modify their line of sight.

L1011 · 24-07-2019 11:52pm

My package has the epaper. Not even installed the app!

JTMan · 27-07-2019 7:44pm

IRE60 wrote: »

The epaper model is a bit past tense at this point - strange the ABC don't modify their line of sight.

Yeah, neither the Irish Times self-measurement method nor the ABC method seem fair. The IT method includes free subs which is hardly a 'subscription' and the ABC digital measurement is too narrow.

The honest digital subs figure for the IT is somewhere between 21k and 90k. If only an accurate stat was available.

JTMan · 30-07-2019 8:24pm

Mediahuis have court approval and minster approval. Next step is to buy remaining shares and take the company private which will take a month. Meanwhile the OECD mess continues.

JTMan · 03-08-2019 4:07pm

More than half of all workers at the printing plant of Celtic Media, are to be laid off after the loss of its most lucrative contract, to print the Irish Daily Mirror, staff have been told.

JTMan · 13-08-2019 6:25pm

The Clare People regional newspaper has ceased publication. Accounts for Clare College News Limited, the company that owns the title, show it had racked up more than €1.5 million in losses by the end of 2017.

JTMan · 15-08-2019 9:08pm

ABC time again ... (with a much bigger day on Thursday next week with the Irish circulation numbers)

UK newspaper circulation in Ireland for July 2019 analysis by iLevel here.

UK analysis here.

Magazine circulation analysis here, here and here.

The journey into the sunset for print continues.

IRE60 · 16-08-2019 11:20am

Yea - Thursday should be 'fun'. The rate of decline is really beginning to escalate, more than I would have expected.

The papers on the monthly ABC (the majority in the market) are, on a six month basis, showing an 11% decline year on year to July 2019. Historically the figures show that the decline of the monthly ABC papers and the six monthly, when looked at on a six month basis are highly correlated – therefore, bar any fcukology in the bulks department, I’d expect the same for Thursday.

JTMan · 16-08-2019 3:45pm

IRE60 wrote: »

The rate of decline is really beginning to escalate, more than I would have expected.

Yeah, it was not that long ago that the rate of decline seemed to be a steady 8% YoY. The average rate of decline in the UK, for the non-free national newspapers is now 12% YoY. This compares to 14% YoY for UK dailies in Ireland and 11% YoY for UK Sundays in Ireland. The magazine market, in the UK, is declining at an average of 16% for the non-free titles. Low double digit annual percentage declines seems to be the norm now for annual print declines which might accelerate the timeline for the closure of print titles.

IRE60 · 22-08-2019 10:40am

Well - we may never know! Looks as if Independent News & Media have pulled out of the ABC certification!

JTMan · 22-08-2019 10:53am

This is very disappointing news. Was really looking forward to the figures.

I bet advertisers will be unhappy. Advertisers can no longer get their hands on reliable figures. Hopefully some major advertisers put pressure on INM to be ABC re-certified.

IRE60 · 22-08-2019 11:16am

ABC reply to email:

'Independent News & Media has made the decision to resign its titles from ABC membership. Effective from 20th August 2019, the Sunday Independent, Sunday World, The Herald and the Irish Independent ceased to be in membership. ABC figures for these titles were last published in our February 2019 Island of Ireland report for the reporting period ending December 2018. These figures have been audited'

JTMan · 22-08-2019 1:37pm

The ABC report (minus IN&M :mad:) is out.

iLevel have excellent analysis, as always, here.

IRE60 · 22-08-2019 1:46pm

The Irish Times struck again. Shined up their own sh!t and added their sales, digital and bulks into one figure. In their sales, although not broken down, are their sales across the border - however when discussing everyone else - they just used their RoI numbers. Amazing really.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/the-irish-times-records-daily-circulation-of-79-021-in-first-half-of-2019-1.3993973

bogmanfan · 22-08-2019 3:56pm

They should heed the lessons of horror movies, especially the Blair Witch Project:

'What we are imagining is far worse than anything they could show us'

JTMan · 22-08-2019 6:22pm

A few thoughts on todays figures:

- INM have strangely left the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Life titles inside the ABC.
- @IE60 - Your comment about the People: "You can only speculate as to where the ‘red line’ is for the paper in terms of economics and maintaining a presence in the Irish market at sales of less than 7,000". The People have a presence in a bubble wrapping way only. The People has little or no Irish content except TV listings.
- The future of the Irish Daily Star and to a lesser extent the Irish Mirror looks precarious. As does the Sunday Business Post.
- One would wonder if the INM circulation decline figures were so bad that it helped spur an ABC exit.
- I wish we had accurate digital stats for the Irish Times. ABC skew with their stupid epaper rule. Irish Times exaduate by including free subs.

IRE60 · 22-08-2019 7:46pm

It’s interesting times! A clear marker laid down as to the direction the new owners want to take. They obviously feel that the ABC metric is not where they are at – which begs a question - what is the metric for the future as far as they are concerned.
You have to have an independent assessment of your figures, in my opinion. Perhaps the agencies have been given access, but I am also told that TGI research is a standard for them.
What do the 'remainers' do! Stay with ABC or, now that that the indo is gone, do they leave?
Regardless, there has to be some standard of measurement that's applicable across the industry - otherwise, buyers would be reliant on 'publishers statements'. A genious MD I worked for many years back said that a publishers statement was about as sincere as a kiss from a whore!

Loafing Oaf · 23-08-2019 11:06am

IRE60 wrote: »

It’s interesting times! A clear marker laid down as to the direction the new owners want to take. They obviously feel that the ABC metric is not where they are at – which begs a question - what is the metric for the future as far as they are concerned.
You have to have an independent assessment of your figures, in my opinion. Perhaps the agencies have been given access, but I am also told that TGI research is a standard for them.
What do the 'remainers' do! Stay with ABC or, now that that the indo is gone, do they leave?
Regardless, there has to be some standard of measurement that's applicable across the industry - otherwise, buyers would be reliant on 'publishers statements'. A genious MD I worked for many years back said that a publishers statement was about as sincere as a kiss from a whore!

Mediahuis are serious people though. You'd have to assume they wouldn't they wouldn't take a step like this without first ascertaining it wouldn't do them serious harm with advertisers.

IRE60 · 23-08-2019 11:19am

Yea, I'd agree with that. Perhaps that metric had seen its day in terms of media planning. As I mentioned most agencies use TGI research which might cover all the basis.

And further (he says animatedly) if the media agencies have that data - then why should the papers release any data! Just to satisfy the curious!

JTMan · 08-09-2019 8:16am

The previous owner of the Sunday Business Post lost 1.1 million EUR on the sale of the business. That's what happens when you invest in legacy old media newspaper assets with low digital footprints.

LuasSimon · 08-09-2019 8:23am

The Irish independent can’t be in great shape , don’t know anyone who buys it and every hotel you go into there’s free copies everywhere , that’s hardly a sustainable model ??
For what it’s with Friday’s free copy I picked up wouldn’t have you going out to buy it , very sensationalist headlines with very little detail in articles , lots of waffle .
It seems to hate the Church , The GAA and rural Ireland which alienated a lot of rural Ireland in particular over the past few years .

JTMan · 08-09-2019 10:49am

Based on 2018 numbers, about 17k free copies of the Indo are given away daily, which is about a quarter of overall circulation.

The quality of the product has certainly declined as page numbers have been reduced, journalists have been let go which is as a consequence of declining circulation and declining advertising revenue which have being on a rapid download curve for about 12 years now.

That said, it is still profitable but profits are declining and the challenges are enormous.

Muahahaha · 08-09-2019 11:24am

Anytime I pick up a free Indo I've literally read it in less than 10 minutes as you've already seen all the articles (or a variation of them) online 24 or 48 hours previous. Its pretty pointless unless you never read news online and their opinion writers are generally very poor with nothing new to say except to push their agendas.

Loafing Oaf · 08-09-2019 2:24pm

LuasSimon wrote: »

It seems to hate the GAA

I've never seen any sign of that. GAA coverage takes up a huge chunk of the sports pages every summer

LuasSimon · 08-09-2019 8:51pm

Loafing Oaf wrote: »

I've never seen any sign of that. GAA coverage takes up a huge chunk of the sports pages every summer

A few articles the weekend that might be reasonable but Martin breheny and Colin keys etc have an article most other days with the most negative gaa article they can come up with as their objective.

JTMan · 10-09-2019 8:24pm

Always fascinated as to how the smaller newspapers keep their head above water.

The results for Independent Star, who publish the Irish Daily Star came out today for 2018.

- Turnover was down from 17.4 million to 16.1 million
- Distribution and printing expenses down from 4.4 million to 4.2 million
- Wages and staff costs were down from 4.2 million to 4.1 million
- Reach paid 0.4 million for content from the UK star.
- Profit down from 1.5 million to 0.8 million.
- Legal provision up by 0.4 million.
- Lease expires this year.

Once again they keep their head above water thanks to cost cutting but the cost cutting scope seems to be narrowing.

The decline continues

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