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Global Newspaper Sales Still Growing Says WAN …
The headline figure is impressive – in spite of all the problems we know newspapers are going through, global sales increased 1.3% last year, and have increased 8.8% over the past four years, and that, says World Association of Newspapers President Gavin O’Reilly, contradicts “misleading reports predicting the imminent death of newspapers.”
Well since ftm is a strong proponent of print we’re pleased to see any statistics that say print is doing fine, but as we all know the devil is in the detail, and look closely at the numbers and in the rich western world newspapers sales are still contracting while it is in Asia and Africa that numbers are on the rise.
We’ll go deeper next week into the facts and figures of WAN’s conference in Barcelona, but it’s O’Reilly’s job to say how great things are in newspaperland so here are the basic sound bites of his speech:
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1.9 billion people read a paid daily newspaper every day.
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Newspapers reach 41% more adults than the world wide web.
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More adults read a newspaper every day than people eat a Big Mac every year.
“Whilst it may be true to say that in some regions, circulations are not a boom sector, newspapers continue to be a global mass media to be reckoned with, achieving a global average reach of over one third of the world’s population,” O’Reilly said. “So if we are a declining industry, the definition of declining is a strange one. We are an industry with massive reach of the global population and one that achieves massive revenues.”
…But A US Journalism Journal Worries About Cities Without Newspapers
Gavin O’Reilly may be telling everyone in Barcelona at the WAN conference how great things are in global newspaperland, but when a prestigious journal such as the American Journalism Review (AJR) runs a story headlined, “Cities Without Newspapers” with the tagline, “As the economic noose tightens, the notion of big cities without local dailies seems a real possibility. What would the impact be on civic life? And what might emerge to fill the gap?” then that seems to give a slightly different spin to what’s really going on.
We’ll let you read the full AJR story to form your own view, but the bottom line seems to be that communities really do suffer when they lose their print papers. There hasn’t been too much research on the subject before, but given current circumstances that research is on the increase and it’s saying that whether people realize it or not, newspapers play an important role in their lives and their closures are a real loss to the communities they served.
New Sky marketing promises ‘noise’
Bang, bang
After harmonizing the German company as Sky with other News Corp owned pay-TV outlets CEO Mark Williams said he’d make some “noise” with the new channel and marketing plan. Premiere is no more. And the plan will put the squeeze on basic service subscribers to upgrade.
Sky World will offer 20 entertainment channels from €16.90 per month. From there, the prices go up. Add in all the HD, movie and sports channels and the price per month is €59.90. The new plan "has some similarities to Sky Italia's and BSkyB's ones but isn't identical," said Williams to Dow Jones Newswire (May 27).
Williams wants to add more than a million subscribers by the end of the year. The “noise” starts July 4th. All current Sky/Premiere customer contracts expire by the end of 2010. (JMH)
Newspaper Articles To Be Translated Into EU Languages
The European Commission believes that one way of bringing people together is that they be able to read one another’s newspapers but with 23 official languages within the 27 member states that’s a bit difficult. But it has made a start by funding (€3 million) a new web site that, with a team of 10 journalists, is monitoring around 250 newspapers from inside and outside the EU and will publish a selection of their stories in 10 languages with the other 13 languages to follow within five years.
The project is being run by Courrier International of France, along with Internazionale in Italy, Forum Polityka in Poland and Courrier Internacional in Portugal.
The EU says that while providing funding, editorial control is with the site itself and the EU will not be dictating which stories should (or should not) be translated
The web sites are targeting 1.5 million unique visitors a month for the ten languages by the end of next year.
Dean Singleton’s Current View of the Newspaper Industry
The Colorado Statesman has run a fascinating interview with Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews, on a variety of subjects but what he has to say about the US newspaper industry is of particular interest.
“I think we go overboard to cover problems in the newspaper industry and undercover what’s happening in other media — radio and TV in particular. And they don’t cover themselves.
If all you knew is what you read in the newspaper you would think newspapers are about to go away.
They’re not about to go away.
Second newspapers in competitive markets, they’re going away. There isn’t enough revenue to support them. Some major metros that are surrounded by strong suburban local dailies aren’t going to make it because they don’t have enough of the ad pie to support what they do.
So some newspapers aren’t going to make it. But most newspapers are going to make it.
And I think, unfortunately, the typical observer doesn’t know the difference between the two…
So, while the structural change in newspapers and the economic decline that we’re having nationwide is hurting all newspapers, they’re hurting the major metros surrounded by suburban newspapers a lot more.
This shakeout may shake out some very fine newspapers, but most will get through it and do okay.”
Regulator keeps regulating
Teleshopping OK, more ads NOT OK
UK media regulator OFCOM, which dips its stick into just about everything, decided in its review of advertising that commercial public service television broadcasters – that would include ITV – can broadcast teleshopping programs…but only between midnight and six o’clock in the morning. Other commercial television channels will also be able to more than 3 hours of teleshopping daily. None of this affects the BBC channels.
At the same time OFCOM did not offer the commercial public service television broadcasters more ad time per hour. Seeking harmony commercial public service television channels will be allowed the same number of spot breaks per program as commercial TV channels – so long as they are more than an hour long and not news, children’s shows and movies.
The European Commission has a hard and fast 12 minute per hour spot rule which Member States challenge at their peril. (JMH)
Vatican Radio, the international broadcasting service of the Holy See, will begin airing ads in July, said station director Father Federico Lombardi (May 26), reported by dpa. Italian energy company Enel is the station’s first advertiser.
“We are proud to have been chosen as the first advertiser on one of the world's most widely broadcast radio stations,” said Enel Chairman Piero Gnudi.
This has certainly been a media year for the Vatican. Launched so far have been an iPhone, Facebook and YouTube apps. On its first day Pope2You.com received a half million visits, said Catholic News Agency (May 26). (JMH)
Waiting on mobile TV
One, maybe two more years
French mobile operators SFR and Orange will wait another year or two before bringing mobile TV to their 3G networks, reports Les Echos (May 26).
The French government hired special mediator Cyril Viguier to work out details between TV companies and mobile operators for rolling out mobile TV. The two biggest mobile operators don’t want to take on the “industrial risk.” Part of that would be the €25 million required of each operator for a mobile TV network to broadcast the major French channels.
Money is, of course, everything today and another risk the mobile operators don’t want to undertake is capacity overload on the profitable 3G networks. Content on mobile TV, being quite dense, would, they say, cause blackouts. Customers would be unhappy. (More on mobile TV here)
The government wants to press mobile operators to get on with it, a 2010 deadline being in place. Missing that, licenses could be lost. Keeping a close watch on reality, the main mobile operators want the entire process delayed. (JMH)
Closing Auto Dealerships Will Really Hurt US Local Media
If there is one section of the US media that is said to be doing better than others it is the local newspaper or the local radio station that heavily depends on local retail advertising. But now that Chrysler and GM are announcing big cutbacks in their dealership this surely can’t be good news to truly local media. And it’s not.
One estimate has some $700 million in local dealership advertising spend disappearing. For local media it could be the difference between make and bust as local newspapers, for instance, usually budget around 25% of their income on local auto dealership income.
That’s something that prospective buyers will no doubt be taking into account.
Craigslist Really Is The Villain
The Pew Internet and America Life project has drawn up some really frightening figures on how newspapers have lost their classified business thanks to the likes of Craigslist and other free classified web sites.
In the peak year for US newspapers, in 2000, classified advertising was worth about $19.6 billion to the US newspaper business. In 2008 it was down to $9.9 billion – about half.
“In the world of online classified advertising, Craigslist is by far the most used Web site in the United States," the Pew report said. "In March 2009, classified sites averaged 53.8 million unique visitors, up 7 percent from February. Craigslist had 42.2 million unique visitors in the month of March." That means Craigslist has some 78% of the online classified market.
And you’ll note from that quote that accessing those Internet sites increases each month while newspapers are still on a downward curb.
Ultra local news model
Government paid and online
Ten Alps, the media company owned by Bob Geldoff, said it would be bidding on the news provider contract offered by UK media regulator OFCOM. The six Northern Ireland counties will be the beneficiary of an OFCOM grant to insure local news doesn’t fade away. The company said, if successful, the funding will go to a consortium of Ten Alps and newspapers.
As proposed, reported by the Independent (Ireland) (May 20), the new news service will appear on newspaper websites, its own website and television broadcaster UTV.
This is only one of many steps toward separating traditional media (i.e. newspapers and broadcasters) from content creation. Much of television has become a purely distribution center, offering content others produce. This has largely not included news. It’s territory newspapers have feared to tread.
The company’s Fermanagh TV opened as an “ultra local online TV service.”
WSJ hints Russian investor for Facebook
Social network consolidation?
The Wall Street Journal (May 23) scooped Russian and other media watchers with a report that Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is ready to invest €143 million (US$200 million) for a 2% stake in Facebook. Nobody is commenting officially. Stock traders went bonkers as such a stock purchase would value Facebook at €7.15 billion (US$10 billion) or more.
DST, owned by Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, has a significant stake in Russian social networking site Vkontakte, which boasts of 30 million registered users.
At the moment the Facebook brand name is exceptionally strong. Anybody – anywhere - with a social networking portal and a certain financial ability would be nuts not to consider buying in. (JMH)
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