{"id":6069,"date":"2009-07-08T22:13:19","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T21:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=6069"},"modified":"2009-07-08T22:14:37","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T21:14:37","slug":"mainstream-media-profits-plunge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/media-news\/mainstream-media-profits-plunge\/","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream Media Profits Plunge"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bigger newspapers are, the harder their profits fell in the last five years, according to newly revised data provided Monday by the Inland Press Association<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Profits fell 100.1% since 2004 at newspapers with circulation greater than 80,000, said Tim Mather, the analyst at the trade association who collated financial date reported by 120 papers across the nation.<\/p>\n

Compared with other industries, however, publishers on average still are doing remarkably well.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the triple-digit profit plunge occasioned by a 28.09% drop in advertising sales, the largest newspapers reported profits averaging 12% of sales at the end of 2008, according to the Inland study.<\/p>\n

A 12% profit margin is more than double that achieved last year by Wal-Mart Stores, the largest of the Fortune 1,000 companies. A 12% pre-tax profit is just about a percentage point light of the margins run by Exxon and Chevron, the second and third largest corporations behind Wal-Mart on the Fortune list.<\/p>\n

The reason margins could fall 100% and profits could still average 12% is that some newspapers plunged from proftabiliy to steep losses but other pubications still generated healthy, double-digit margins, said Mather in response to queries (see comments below) as to the validity of the data.<\/p>\n

If average profitability were calculated on a weighted basis, then it might be lower than 12%, he explained. But the association took a simple average of the profitability of each publication in each of several circulation brackets and \u201cthat\u2019s the way the math works,\u201d said Mather.<\/p>\n

As you can see from the table below, sales in the last five years fell at all but the smallest papers. However, operating profits tumbled in each and every circulation category.<\/p>\n

Papers with less than 15k circulation reported that they were able to lift revenues despite a slump in advertising that started in 2006 and has accelerated every quarter since.<\/p>\n

Papers with circulation of 15k to 25k suffered the least damage to their bottom lines, according to data volunteered by publishers who were guaranteed anonymity by the industry association.<\/p>\n

When the Inland survey originally was released last week, an error in computing the data indicated that papers in the 25k-50k bracket had suffered a 190% plunge in profitability. But Mather said the actual drop was 90%.<\/p>\n

The results in the original report were counterintuitive, because the abundance of anecdotal evidence suggests metro papers have been most deeply affected by declines in readership and advertising revenues.<\/p>\n

Combined with high and intractable cost structures, it stood to reason that their profits would be squeezed the most.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bigger newspapers are, the harder their profits fell in the last five years, according to newly revised data provided Monday by the Inland Press Association. Profits fell 100.1% since 2004 at newspapers with circulation greater than 80,000, said Tim Mather, the analyst at the trade association who collated financial date reported by 120 papers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"category-media-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}