|
The reason for the recent silence of this blog is nothing to do with the Murdoch takeover of the WSJ. I just give the guy a sofa to sleep on when he's in South West Florida, that's it..
In fact it's the fault of a much more interesting client of mine, whose offices are a two-hour drive from my home. This means that I have been spending four hours a day in my car, which really cuts into my alone time with my keyboard.
The good news is that it's given me a new optimism about the future of the newspaper. Now I can see how we get some of our revenue and readers back. We get them to read their newspapers in the car.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
You will I'm sure have heard about Media General's terrible numbers. Profit down by 28.7%, ad revenues down by 11% on 2006. This is meltdown territory.
I'll spare you another run through the reasons why the internet cannot be our only future. (Media General's 8% interactive division is pleased by 61% growth though its revenue only just covers interest payments on two new TV stations the company acquired).
But let's be clear: there's no positive spin to be spun on these numbers.
|
|
Read more...
|
I thought I'd have a look at Gannett's numbers to see if they reflected the same percentages of revenues as McClatchy's. It's harder to tell from Gannett's 2006 annual report, because they still put newspaper and online revenue together under the heading of newspaper revenue.
But Gannett chief Craig Dubow did reveal in his preamble to last year's annual report that
"our digital revenues for 2006 surpassed $400 million, substantial growth over 2005".
Now that really does sound like a big number. Until you realize just how big Gannett is. Advertising revenues from newspapers (which includes online) was $5.37 billion. Revenue from circulation was $1.3 billion. So $400 million is 5.99% of revenue (excluding broadcast and other).
|
|
Read more...
|
|
I thought I was going to hate Jon Fine's Business Week piece about which newspaper would be the first to go all digital. I know that the blogging tradition dictates I'm obliged to get very angry and attack the guy because I completely disagree with the proposition he is exploring, but in the end I think Fine's piece was articulate, thought provoking and useful. Everything a column should be.
More importantly, he's started the conversation about what is probably going to be the central question of the next stage of newspapers on the internet and that's a good thing too.
|
|
Read more...
|
Posted by Sniffer dog at 7/11/2007 10:50 AM and is filed under
Thanks to Romenesko for pointing me at this very fine piece of business journalism from Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil.
I don't agree with his characterization of newspapers as "fish-wrapping" but the article is still a cogent analysis of an impending implosion at McClatchy by someone who plainly knows their way around a balance sheet.
He points to the huge amount of "goodwill" - which basically reflects how much you paid for a business beyond its actual assets - remaining on McClatchy's balance sheet from the Knight Ridder purchase, and suggests that this amount of goodwill is unsustainable in the short term. The consequences of writing down this goodwill would likely be grave for McClatchy's share price, though with a 31% discount to the share price at the time of the piurchase the market may already have accounted for it.
If you were a VC looking for some risk with a big potential upside in hidden assets (that distribution network and customer base again!) and waste (paper costs from overlarge newspapers) from an underperforming unfashionable business then I'd be starting to get very interested in McClatchy in a few months if some of this goodwill is written off and the shares collapse further.
I wonder if the political value of entering the US newspaper market might appeal to a Chinese investor with dollars to burn.
Any intrigued VCs who want to know how to unlock the value of these assets, well, you have my email address and Inksniffer's forthcoming Mandarin RSS feed.
|
|
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 Next > End >>
|
|
Page 2 of 4 |
