Newspaper survival (was: Can Citadel Broadcasting survive?)

[Dave Doherty]

A year or two ago, I read that all the radio revenue in the LA market 
combined was less than the LA Times was getting for classified alone.

That reminds me of the days in the early 1970s when I worked at WGY. They 
pulled in about 85% of the radio revenue for the entire market. Everybody 
else was scratching around for whatever they could get. Not ten years later, 
they were surpassed by any number of FMs.  They are still on the air, of 
course, but the business model is totally different.

Similarly, I suspect that each major market has one uber-paper that hauls in 
the vast majority of the newspaper revenue:  NY Times, Boston Globe, 
Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, etc. Those 
papers probably take in more on legal notices than some of the biggest radio 
billers, and that alone may keep them alive.

But newspapers have huge distribution expenses. Radio stations don't have 
hundred million dollar presses fed with millions of dollars worth of paper 
and ink tended 24/7 by small crews of people who produce the physical 
bundles of paper every day , then pass them to large numbers of people who 
literally drive them to tens of thousands of distribution points. The total 
cost of operation of even a 50kW AM transmitter is a vanishly small fraction 
of the cost of operating even a modern, efficient, printing plant and 
getting the physical product into the hands of the readers.

So while WGY was able to survive by cutting costs, the newspaper model for 
all but the uber-papers would seem to have no similar survival mode 
available.

-Dave Doherty
 Skywaves, Inc.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sid Schweiger" <sid@wrko.com>
To: "boston Radio Interest" <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 8:32 AM
Subject: Newspaper survival (was: Can Citadel Broadcasting survive?)



>>Print is hurting worse than this, believe it or not. Layoffs all
> around yesterday, with massive cuts at the MediaNews-owned L.A. Daily
> News and its other southern California papers, more cuts at the
> company's San Jose Mercury News due next week, and major layoffs at
> Tribune-owned Newsday (described as a "massacre" in Friday's N.Y.
> Post). Everyone blames the Internet for print's problems; that doesn't
> seem to be playing as prominent a role in radio's struggles.

I suppose broadcast journalists don't think print matters and print
doesn't want to report on themselves.  But I did see an item in
yesterday's Herald about more layoffs at the Globe.<<

If the statistics I've seen are any indication, newspapers are in very, very 
serious trouble.  Their demographics are horrible (essentially, very few 
people under age 55 read a newspaper consistently), and they are losing ad 
dollars left and right to almost all other mass media including the 
Internet.  If you look at the businesses which place all or almost all their 
ad dollars in newspapers, they're the large, institutional advertisers who 
can't cram what they want to advertise into 60- or 30-second spots, or 
banners on a web page...i.e., Sears, Macy's, JC Penney, etc.  Business like 
that spend almost no money in electronic media, and many of them are in 
serious trouble because of it.  One business consultant (in an article on 
AOL) is even predicting the demise of the three I named...*this* year.

I've seen a few predictions from media consultants that any newspaper which 
doesn't make drastic changes to its distribution and business models within 
five years will be out of business.  I have a feeling that's a bit 
exaggerated, but the decline is quite evident and shows no signs of 
reversal.




Sid Schweiger
IT Manager, Entercom New England
WAAF/WEEI/WEEI-FM/WKAF/WMKK/WRKO/WVEI/WVEI-FM
20 Guest St / 3d Floor
Brighton MA  02135-2040
P: 617-779-5369
F: 617-779-5379
E: sid@wrko.com