Newspaper Death Spiral Continues - Ads Down 18% Y/Y

The newspaper industry in the U.S. continues to shrink at an alarming rate. According to the Newspaper Association of America, total industry advertising (both print and online) in the third quarter was $8.9 billion, down 18 percent from the year before. The online portion of that was $750 million, down 3 percent. So far in the first three quarters of 2008, the industry’s total advertising revenues have shrunk by $5 billion to $27.8 billion.

Print advertising has been declining for ten straight quarters, but this marks only the second quarter that online advertising also went down. More concerning is that the overall rate of decline seems to be accelerating, a trend we noted in September. Here is the percentage change in total newspaper advertising for the past five quarters:

3Q07: -7.4%
4Q07: -10.3%
1Q08: -12.85%
2Q08: -15.11%
3Q08: -18.11%

The fourth quarter will probably be worse.

Original article

Comments

[Brad Christ...:]

For a company like The New York Times, the drop in the stock price just doesn't make sense to me. My reason being that the company is not just the single newspaper. They have holdings in TV stations, high profile magazines and other media outlets that have not seen their advertising revenues drop at these alarming rates. Just my 2 cents..

Brad

2008 Nov 29 10:06 AM

[Kbentleyis:]

Simple. Media became too bias and not reporting truth on political issues. If the media can't report real truthful news... who needs it? Even the bashing of Obama's opposition candidates boardered on shear bullpucky. What did the media expect from the American people.

Media denies being biased; the people say otherwise. Enjoy poverty like the rest of us.

2008 Nov 29 06:36 PM

[Duude:]

One very important reason for the NYT to dive is the issue of its dual stock class status. One family controls the corporation and has proven itself time and time and time again to be totally ignorant of the great number of problems the newspaper industry is facing. They can see what has happened but react without any coherent strategy to address their issues. They seem to be fixed on avoiding change. Additionally, they don't hear the calls of biased reporting which only accelerates their loss of circulation. The only chance they have is selling the company to a more competent capable publisher.

2008 Dec 01 03:25 PM