Media stocks slide with Dow

Media stocks didn’t escape the mayhem on Monday, Sept. 29. Newspaper stocks have already been drubbed this year (heck, most have had their pants yanked to their ankles at this point) and some took another beating: Newscorp down nearly 10 percent; Gannett down almost 7 percent; Media General down 4.5 percent.

Oddly, McClatchy — which has dropped more than 90 percent of its value since the ill-fated KRT purchase in 2005 — rose nearly 2 percent. The bump was on news of a new agreement with lenders regarding the $1.2 billion debt it is carrying. But even that silver cloud had a lead lining because the deal — negotiated because of reduced revenue expectations — required the newspaper company to put up more collateral and accept a higher interest rate.

Does it mean anything that broadcasters were hit harder than most newspaper companies? Or is that simply because there is more value remaining in the TV company stocks than in most from newspapers?

The following figures are from Al Tompkins blog.

News Corp. and Viacom hit their lowest levels in more than four years, while CBS and Time Warner fell to one-year lows.

Here’s my summary:
News Corp. down 9.6%
Viacom down 7.83%
CBS down 7.14%
Belo Corp. down 4.27%
Time Warner down 9.22%
Walt Disney Co. down 9.22%
Gannett Co. down 6.59%
New York Times Co. down 3.82%
Media General down 4.33%
Washington Post Co. down 4.18%
McClatchy Co. actually rose 1.78% on news that a new debt agreement had been struck with lenders.
Hearst-Argyle Television was only down 2.87%
Meredith Corp. was down even less, only .69%
Charter Communications down 2.38%
Cablevision Systems Corp. down 5.47%
General Electric Co., a Dow Industrial Average component and parent of NBC Universal, saw a 8.51% stock price drop Monday.

The illusion of floating

An explanation for the long delay between posts:

Dwelling daily on the cataclysmic decline of the newspaper business, especially when one takes ones living from said business, can be difficult. Perhaps not surprisingly, the stress of wondering whether you will have a job or a career tomorrow (as that may affect whether you have a house soon after) can cause physical issues. Still, it caught me off guard.

I’ve spent nearly 30 years in the newspaper business and know now that each day could be my last. If that should come to pass I won’t be going on to any other newspapers because they won’t be hiring. Heck, if I’m right many won’t even exist in the not too distant future.

Besides scaring my hair straight, that prospect made it difficult to sleep, hard to eat, and seems to have conjured a whole litany of actual physical ailments. Perhaps anti-anxiety meds will enable me to keep blogging on the subject. Then again, perhaps not.

There is not much in the way of an audience for my thoughts. This is predominantly to provide some small illusion of control over the monumental events swirling around me. I will simply stop if it contributes to the sense of being swallowed rather than floating on top.

What’s the plan?

Newspapers are in the midst of the greatest retrenchment in their modern history. Almost weekly there are reports of a few hundred more jobs being cut or eliminated. According to the Paper Cuts web site, created to track the loss of jobs at US newspapers, there have been nearly 11,000 jobs lost this year and there are still three months to go. That’s up from about 2,200 in all of last year.

It isn’t like this hasn’t happened before. There have been multiple rounds of buyouts at the newspaper I now call home. The most recent will reduce editorial staff by almost one-third. At my last paper, a mid-sized daily in the Philadelphia area, I survived three rounds of layoffs. In one round I saw a photographer with 12 years at the paper ushered out the door because he had the least seniority in that department.

But the difference in the past was that the newspapers didn’t really need a plan. They cut back and rode it out, confident that the economic factors affecting their bottom line would eventually be reversed and all would return to business as usual. That doesn’t seem likely this time.

The newspaper industry is in the midst of the longest and most severe advertising revenue downturn in US history. And rather than finding a floor, indicators are that everything up to now has just been the beginning of a deepening decline.

Here is what Alan Mutter at Newsosaur had to say on the subject:

In the longest sales setback ever, advertising revenues at newspapers declined for 9 or 10 consecutive quarters in the period ended on June 30, 2008. This surpasses the downturns in 1990-91 and 2001-02, when sales in each case slid for six of eight consecutive quarters before they revived.

If sagging newspaper sales don’t turn around in the second half of this year – which few expect they can do – then the decline will be on track to be twice as long as any in history.

What will make matters worse? More major retailers are expected to go bankrupt and the credit crunch will discourage others from spending cash on hand for newspaper ads. But what may be most telling is that advertisers are losing confidence in newspapers.

As evidence Mutter cites a report to the NAA Retail Advertising Forum that just concluded in Dallas, TX.

While most of the retailers appearing at the NAA conference continued to profess their appreciation for newspaper advertising, David T. Clark of Deutsche Bank said in the report that nearly all of them are moving ever-greater percentages of their advertising budgets to the interactive media – especially when young people are the targets.

Marketers “are ‘flummoxed’ by the multitude of media choices they have right now, so there is an opportunity for newspapers to step in and offer a multi-platform ‘big idea’ to major retail advertisers,” says Clark. “However, it is unclear whether many newspapers are up to the challenge, though there appear to be some that are.”

And newspapers may have a limited window in which to prove they deserve continued advertiser support. According to Clark.

“The next year to 18 months may be ‘make or break’ for the newspapers,” he said in the report. All signs point to weak retail sales and lean advertising budgets for the balance of this year and much of next, [making] it “unclear” whether newspapers “are moving fast enough to secure local market share for when the economy climbs out of its hole.”

What’s your newspaper doing? Do they have a plan to stop their slide or climb out of the hole? Or are they just cutting jobs and hoping it will all turn around on its own? And what are you doing to prepare yourself for what comes out of their plan?

Tags: futureof newspapers, advertising, revenue, employment