http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney Peter Kirwan on media business and finance Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:31:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Johnston Press may yet regret not selling its Irish newspapers for a firesale price last year. I say this because of what the company told investors last week about ad revenues at its division in the Republic. During 2009 as a whole ad revenues at papers like the Leinster Leader and the ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/03/15/irish-newspapers-lagging-behind-the-uks-anaemic-recovery/ Some news organisations have had a half-decent recession. Trinity Mirror’s nationals rank among them. This morning, Trinity Mirror released its final results for the year to December 2009. Ad revenues at the Daily Mirror and its stablemates fell by 8% during 2009. That's far less than the chunky double-digit percentage declines that ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/03/04/at-trinity-mirrors-nationals-the-worst-recession-in-living-memory-feels-like-a-blip/ I love the BBC, but I tend to worry about it a lot. On p70 of Mark Thompson's Strategic Review, I found the kind of evidence that supports my fears. The paragraph that gripped me refers to the future of BBC Online. It goes like this: There will be no specialist content for ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/03/03/bbc-strategy-review-promises-more-not-less-competition-for-newspapers/ At both the Guardian and the Daily Mail, readers are outraged by Mark Thompson’s plans to prune the BBC’s output. It might not feel like it, but this is excellent news for the Corporation. Finally, the BBC has achieved its aim: it has moved ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/03/02/mr-thompson-plays-a-blinder-outrage-over-bbc-cuts-spells-trouble-for-the-tories/ Over at t’other place, newsquestslave casts a critical eye on yesterday’s post comparing GMG and Trinity Mirror as owners of the Manchester Evening News. (S)he takes issue with my suggestion that GMG invested steadily in its regionals during the late noughties, even as revenues and profits declined. 1) Operating expenditure isn’t everything I ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/11/manchester-evening-news-did-gmg-invest-in-things-that-matter/ A few kind souls at Hold The Front Page are predicting what awaits employees of Guardian Media Group who will soon start working for Trinity Mirror: “For those who thought [GMG Regional Media chief executive Mark] Dodson was a ruthless hatchet man, you ain't seen nothing yet...” “God help them....If they ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/10/gmg-the-manchester-evening-news-cest-magnifique-mais-ce-nest-pas-la-guerre/ For most Britons, the Blair-Brown boom reached a peak in early 2008. Yet as always, the news business was ahead of the game. For most publishers, revenues hit an all-time high during 2004-2005. One deal, in particular, signalled that we had reached the peak. In December 2005, Johnston Press bought Scotsman Publications ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/10/7m-for-the-manchester-evening-news-carolyn-mccall-isnt-related-to-the-barclay-brothers/ As inevitably as night follows day, the debate about paywalls started in earnest during early 2009, a few months after the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, and several months after online display advertising stopped growing. Publishers have spent the past year obsessing about paid content. Yet in the meantime, something wholly inevitable ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/08/online-ad-recovery-will-make-life-tricky-for-paid-content-publishers/ The ongoing spat between the Telegraph and the Guardian has been entertaining. But I wonder whether it might be drawing to a close. In recent months, the Telegraph has become deeply interested in the Guardian’s financial performance, variously describing this as “grim”, “disappointing”, and “disastrous”. The Guardian’s apparent inability to impose compulsory ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/05/will-the-guardian-and-telegraph-play-nice-again/ So Times Newspapers has just hired Paul Gilshan from BSkyB as marketing director. Gilshan was previously head of marketing for Sky Movies and Sky Box Office. At Wapping, Media Week notes, Gilshan will be reunited with his former boss Alex Lewis, who was a director of marketing at BSkyB before ... http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2010/02/02/times-online-supporting-the-big-profits-of-pay-tv/