Posted by Peter Kirwan on 12 May 2010 at 15:01
Tags: Journalism
What happened to the traditional logic of the business cycle?
Local newspapers used to be first into a recession, and first out. This time, they were first in. But it looks like they will be last out — always assuming, of course, that they return to growth at all.
This morning’s trading statement from JP covered the [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 5 May 2010 at 16:24
Tags: Journalism
In the final week of May, or perhaps the first week of June, we’ll get our first glimpse of Wapping’s paywall. Both The Times and the Sunday Times have started a month-long countdown to launch.
But there’s more in the pipeline. Yesterday, during a Q&A with analysts and journalists, Rupert Murdoch mentioned a different (but simultaneous?) [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 26 April 2010 at 15:08
Tags: Journalism
Oh, come off it. ITV to buy Five from RTL?
Dan Sabbagh (at Beehive City) and James Ashton (at The Sunday Times) bravely argue that this story has legs. But short of discovering a hidden pot of gold at the bottom of Dawn Airey’s garden, I find it hard to credit.
1) Yes, the mooted savings [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 26 April 2010 at 12:47
Tags: Journalism
The closure of 23 trade magazines at Reed Business Information in the US seems to have shocked industry commentators.
The closure of titles like Construction Equipment and Modern Materials Handling is part of Reed Elsevier’s long-running plan to winnow down trade magazine publishing to a highly profitable core (or exit the business altogether).
Presumably, RBI’s UK operation in Sutton [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 20 April 2010 at 17:32
Tags: Journalism
Bird-watchers go crazy when they spot an avocet or a bittern. Me, I’m always on the look-out for newspaper executives who are optimistic about the future of online advertising.
Yesterday brought two presentations from executives at Mail Online — accompanied by two (apparently) slightly different perspectives on digital display advertising. Both, ultimately, were positive.
The first presentation [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 16 April 2010 at 15:27
Tags: Journalism
Goldman Sachs is predicting good things for ITV.
The broadcaster’s ad revenues should rise by 10% during 2010, say Goldman’s analysts.
By the end of 2010, this will push ITV’s net advertising revenues up to £1.42bn. This is within spitting distance of what the company achieved on the eve of recession in 2007 (£1.49bn). On top of that, [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 30 March 2010 at 17:12
Tags: Journalism
There’s a grand old tradition among marketers that’s rarely ignored: never diss the competition. A corollary of the rule insists that you should never, ever, diss the competition if you’re the more powerful competitor.
Tony Blair observed this rule in his anti-Cameroon speech at Trimdon Labour Club today. Not once did he mention the Conservative leader [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 29 March 2010 at 22:52
Tags: Journalism
Conventional wisdom suggests that the Guardian will emerge as one of the champions of free-to-air digital content when the Times and Sunday Times erect their paywalls in June.
This, after all, is a newspaper that employs Jeff Jarvis as a columnist. We’ve also witnessed Emily Bell, GNM’s director of digital content, arguing that general news paywalls are [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 26 March 2010 at 12:08
Tags: Journalism
A few things about the Indy-Lebedev deal:
1) Gavin O’Reilly: a “most satisfactory” deal for INM
This phrase, contained in the INM’s statement about the deal, makes O’Reilly sound like a Victorian schoolmaster.
It’s accurate, though. Shutting the Indies would have cost £30m. It would also have generated lots of bad press.
INM has lost a couple of hundred [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 25 March 2010 at 16:21
Tags: Journalism
Brave man, Mr Lebedev.
With today’s sale announcement, it’s now clear why INM started to row back from its ambition to bring the Independent and the Independent On Sunday to breakeven point by the end of 2010.
Originally, that target emerged last summer as part of the effort to placate renegade investor Denis O’Brien. But towards the [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 24 March 2010 at 17:46
Tags: Journalism
Guardian Media Group isn’t known for losing bosses. Yet it’s been a busy 12 months at the top of the company.
In April of last year, GMG appointed the former investment banker Amelia Fawcett to replace Paul Myners as chairman. Six months later, finance director Nick Castro retired. Now it’s spring again, and Carolyn McCall is leaving [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 23 March 2010 at 10:25
Tags: Journalism
The OFT’s decision not to investigate Alexander Lebedev’s acquisition of the Independent and the Independent On Sunday tells us that the newspapers generate revenues of less than £70m a year.
This brings us closer to solving a mystery. For years, the financials of the Indies have been lumped in with a series of other businesses – [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 15 March 2010 at 16:31
Tags: Journalism
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 Kilkenny People fell by a [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 4 March 2010 at 12:08
Tags: Journalism
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 afflicted many broadsheets.
But at tabloids [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 3 March 2010 at 13:59
Tags: Journalism
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 a specialist audience, such [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 2 March 2010 at 15:37
Tags: Journalism
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 a Conservative government’s actions. In doing [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 11 February 2010 at 14:39
Tags: Journalism
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 looked at GMG’s track record [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 10 February 2010 at 12:19
Tags: Journalism
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 think they’ve been squeezed in [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 10 February 2010 at 00:17
Tags: Journalism
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 from the Barclay brothers for £160m. [...]
Posted by Peter Kirwan on 8 February 2010 at 13:52
Tags: Journalism
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 and largely unnoticed has happened [...]
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