Talk about stark numbers -- below are the daily circulation changes at Charlotte, Sacramento, and Miami over the past six months.
The Charlotte Observer
daily 3/31/09: 187,633
daily 9/30/09: 167,585
total loss in 6 months: 20,048
The Sacramento Bee
daily 3/31/09: 248,855
daily 9/30/09: 217,545
total loss in 6 months: 31,310
The Miami Herald
daily 3/31/09: 202,122
daily 9/30/09: 162,260
total loss in 6 months: 39,862
The number of people who have stopped subscribing to these 3 papers in the last 6 months would fill the Rose Bowl.
'll update the information on other papers. If you have numbers, post it in comments with a link.
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23 comments:
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s circulation fell 9.9 percent for Sunday, 13.8 percent weekdays, and 7.7 percent Saturday.
Publisher Gary Wortel said part of the loss occurred outside the paper’s core market. Among factors affecting sales was the discontinuation of a pizza restaurant’s program delivering newspapers along with food orders.
In revenue terms, the circulation declines were more than made up for by price hikes on single-copy sales in April and on home delivery in July, Wortel said. The rack price went from 50 cents to $1 weekdays and Saturday and from $1.50 to $2 Sunday. Monthly home delivery subscriptions rose from $17.50 to $19.95, a 14 percent increase.
What this means to you: if you have stayed with the paper and paid for home delivery, we are going to screw you and charge you more and give you less.
And what person alive thinks this formula will work long term?
Same thing in Charlotte. The moron running circulation will spin this into a tall tale about how they planned for all that, but how can we sell that to our advertisers? They sneak price increases to HD customers every 3 to 6 months, and don't do any price protection. Its dishonest business at its worst.
Look at this “spin” It’s better gymnastics than William Randolph Hearst, who no doubt is spinning in his grave right now! Will McClatchy emulate their fellow travelers?
Chronicle print circulation plummets 25 percent, while web page views soar (SF Business Times)
The San Francisco Chronicle lost more than a quarter of its daily circulation during the first half of this year, plummeting 25.8 percent to under 252,000, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation figures released Monday.
The Hearst Corp.-owned daily, which for decades dominated the Bay Area news landscape, saw Sunday circulation dip more than 22percent, to about 307,000.
Mark Adkins, the Chronicle's president, told the San Francisco Business Times in a late morning Monday interview that the paper "has a new business model that's emerging" and that looking at print circulation numbers in isolation is "sort of a myopic way to look at the business."
Adkins insisted that the big increases in web views and what he described as a much-smaller dip in overall "paid readership" (which includes copies shared with others) of just -6.7 percent, constitute "some very positive information" for the Chronicle's short- and long-term future.
Moreover, Adkins said recent subscription price increases and staff cutbacks have helped stabilize the paper financially.
"Right now, we're profitable some weeks and some weeks we're not," he told the Business Times, adding that the Chronicle expects to be in the black most or all weeks in November and December, although it still expects to post a large loss for the year.
Adkins wouldn't specify revenue or bottom line numbers, but Hearst and Chronicle executives have frequently said this year that the 144-year-old paper had been losing on the order of $1 million a week.
Chronicle's strategy shift starts to pay off (SF GATE)
The Chronicle said Monday that reshaping the newspaper's business model is paying off financially even though, as anticipated, it has resulted in a sharp decline in circulation.
For the six months that ended in September, The Chronicle's daily circulation dropped 25.8 percent to 251,782, compared with the same period in 2008, the steepest decline among major U.S. metropolitan papers.
Data released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which tracks newspaper readership, showed significant circulation declines at papers throughout the country, with the average paper losing more than 10 percent.
Frank Vega, publisher of The Chronicle, said the newspaper's loss in circulation was an expected result of moving away from a business model that depends mainly on advertising and instead relies on readers for a greater share of revenue.
The Chronicle's weekly subscription rate has jumped from $4.75 18 months ago to $7.75 now.
At the same time, the paper has offered fewer subscription discounts and stopped home delivery in places where it no longer makes economic sense.
Profiting some weeks
Because of those changes, Vega said The Chronicle is now turning a profit some weeks after years of significant financial losses, including more than $50 million last year.
"We feel the readers have to make a conscious decision about the paper," Vega said. "And we're pleased that we still have the healthiest audience for any media outlet in the Bay Area."
Vega noted that the paper's online readership continues to grow. Combined, The Chronicle and SFGate.com reach about 1.9 million people in the Bay Area in a typical week. That's down 3.8 percent from this time last year because of the decline in print circulation. Despite the drop, The Chronicle remains the Bay Area's largest newspaper.
Starting next month, the paper will become the first in the country to use glossy, magazine-style paper in its daily editions, although not for every page.
In addition, the paper plans to launch a new arts and culture section, called Ovations, next week.
"If we didn't have improving economics, we wouldn't be able to do that," said Chronicle President Mark Adkins.
Why Newspapers’ Shrinking Circulation Isn’t All Bad (Media Memo) More Turd Spinning
No surprise that Americans are dropping their newspaper subscriptions, as a new batch of numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed yesterday.
But before you file this under “death of newspapers”, do ponder this for a second:
Declining circulation might not be the worst news in the world.
Tough times have forced many papers to rethink their circulation strategies. An obvious conclusion:
Much of the money publishers were spending to print and deliver dead trees has gone to waste.
New strategy: Print fewer copies, and charge more for the ones you do sell.
That’s a tactic, not a strategy, but in the near-term it might work.
New York Times: $6 for a Sunday paper. Sounds like a winner to me!
Re: What this means to you: if you have stayed with the paper and paid for home delivery, we are going to screw you and charge you more and give you less.
And what person alive thinks this formula will work long term?
"Publisher" Gary Wortel is not interested in the Star-Telegram succeeding in the long term or in the Fort Worth community. He's interested in Gary Wortel's success in moving up the corporate leech food change. He doesn't live in the city and doesn't take part in community events. The Wart is nothing more than a hatchet man hired to do his dirty work and move onto his next corporate hit job. Heckuva a legacy, Worty.
This is the End of the Newspaper Business (business.theatlantic)
The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).
I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there.
At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .
For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can't cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren't enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it.
The numbers seem to confirm something I've thought for a while: we're eventually going to end up with a few national papers, a la Britain, rather than local dailies. The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (sorry, conservatives!) are weathering the downturn better than most, and it's not surprising: business, politics, and national upper-middlebrow culture.
But in 25 years, will any of them still be printing their product on the pulped up remains of dead trees? It doesn't seem all that likely.
Can anyone tell me the percentage of decline coming from home delivery, single copy, Newspapers In Education (NIE) and third-party? All circulation is not created equal and all is not paid.
Can anyone tell me the percentage of decline coming from home delivery, single copy, Newspapers In Education (NIE) and third-party? All circulation is not created equal and all is not paid.
You can't blame them for desperate attempts to spin this in a positive light. But you can blame advertisers for believing this fantasy. How inept do have to be in biz to buy into this crap?
All circulation is not created equal and all is not paid.
You are not insinuating that thee companies would pad their circulation numbers would you?
Today's prediction: Lots of high-level meetings going on this week to figure out how the company can offset the mass exodus of subscribers. They can't stop it, but they can cut more costs (jobs) and attempt to assure advertisers all is not lost. This is the biggest reader defection in the history of newspapers.
Anon 8:22 Just a guess, but the McClacthy Politburo will put their collective heads together and then smartly decide to go even further to the left!
What's hurting McClatchy is more inept news and corporate management rather than its stubborn leftwing rants. Think about it: talented managers would see how lefty positions hurt business and drive away subscribers and ads. Either they don't care or they are too ignorant and gutless to demand changes.
I sense more layoffs, a price hike, another web width reduction. Then they can publish their papers as a "Poor McClatchy's Almanac"
Such a handy size to keep on the back of your toilet.
You can take it to the bank and cash it that there will be more layoffs and very soon. These guys got a gift reason to reduce staffs and take more drastic steps and changes.
I can just see management at their meeting thinking about what ideas to implement, and what ideas they absolutely refuse to implement
1. Have reader contest to vote on which cartoon to cancel (Then disregard vote)
2. More Dear Leader tricket sales
3. Write more articles supporting ACORN
4. Raise newspaper prices
5. Change name of “I.P. Stone Award” to “Order of Lenin Award”
6. Award Dear Leader I.P. Stone Award (I can think of no higher honor)
7. Print more DNC talking points
8. Report the Damn News
Anon 7:47 In Charlotte daily circulation is mostly HD and Single Copy. 3rd party is minimal and the circulation geniuses moved NIE to online only, driving more potential readers to the internet. The numbers tell us they need less people to manage circulation, but there are still the same number of managers playing executive and hiding in their offices.
Anon 7:47 In Charlotte daily circulation is mostly HD and Single Copy. 3rd party is minimal and the circulation geniuses moved NIE to online only, driving more potential readers to the internet. The numbers tell us they need less people to manage circulation, but there are still the same number of managers playing executive and hiding in their offices.
When you reduce the quality of the product and increase the price... circulation falls.
Surely no one is surprised.
The current round of meetings getting ready for more cuts in product and service quality will only accelerate circulation declines and reduce advertising rates and importance in the marketing mix.
Grocery ads are next to go.
I heard last year about reduction in coverage area being the driver...it's no longer credible without detailed analysis.
More conservative than your readership, more liberal than the market, many of these papers have entered the death spiral. The only out is an increasingly partisan tabloid with an increasingly tiny readership.
MNI as a corporate entity makes no sense. They bring no value to the individual papers or to the markets they serve. No one can afford the debt or the corporate overhead. Time to dismember MNI.
The time to dismember MNI was lost long ago. McClatchy exists now only to recoup as much of the losses as the banks possibly can.
In the end, they will have all been removed from their bricks and mortar properties and lease space in strip malls to run their web sites. Their real estate will be on the blocks awaiting better times for the banks to sell.
I can think of what to write on their defiant, fist pumping epitaph:
"There's no dispute that The Bee has a liberal editorial page on most issues, though not all matters, and has mostly endorsed Democrats.
We won't change our editorial philosophy to placate critics."
When in a crisis, it is always best to look for guidance and leadership from the same people who created the crisis.
Not.
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