In a sobering assessment of the future of the news industry, the head of the Times and Sunday Times predicts a future where “no more than 10” global English-language news brands will survive by paid subscription models
The Times has seen subscriptions sales jump 200 percent in the last year, since it pivoted from publishing on a breaking-news cycle to a digital editions-based publishing strategy a year ago. Subscriber churn is also at a record low, down 4 percentage points compared to the previous year, according to Catherine Newman, chief marketing officer at The Times and Sunday Times. Last summer, total print and digital paying subscribers rested at 413,600, according to the publisher. And in the first half of 2016, new paying-subscriber sales rose 200 percent compared to the first half of 2015
Display and classified revenues once swelled the profits of daily newspapers but also wrecked the relationship with their readers who became mere statistics with which to sell advertising. Readers (sometimes attracted as much by classified jobs ads as by journalism) became less important than advertisers who provided up to two-thirds of revenues and often 100% of profits
Publishers behind paywalls are stuck with a ‘scaleless’ strategy, believes the Telegraph, as it looks to balance its own paywall with an open model that takes cues from Apple News
The outlook for print advertising has gone from bad to worse. Print newspaper ad spending in the UK, for instance, is set to fall by £135m to £866m this year, even steeper than the £112m drop in 2015, says Enders Analysis. “These are big numbers,” says Douglas McCabe, an analyst at Enders. “This is not advertising that is going to come back.”
Flashes&Flames: Murdoch might cast envious eyes at the 129-year-old, family-owned Hearst Corporation which has built an unrivalled multi-media business, not least by investing widely in long-term partnerships and joint ventures. Last year, Hearst increased its revenue by 6% to almost $11bn in what was the fifth consecutive year of record revenue and profits. Its revenue […]
Pro-EU newspaper the New European is to continue publishing beyond its four-week trial period after beating its sales targets, its publisher, Archant. has announced
Slowing of print advertising decline – with significant improvement since Brexit vote – prompts hopes that downturn is ending
Rivals working together to find ways of countering declining print revenues. Last year revenues from display adverts dropped 15 per cent, with publishers reporting similar figures for the first half of this year
It’s been another ‘bad news’ month for UK newspapers. Just a few weeks after Vice founder Shane Smith predicted a media industry “bloodbath”, Britain’s most successful newspaper group DMGT reported a 16% drop in advertising revenue at the Daily Mail in the six months to the end of March. Even the 20% growth at its Mail Online was scant consolation because annual revenue will not reach the £100m targeted for more than two years. Consequently, the world’s largest English language newspaper site remains far from profitable. Daily sales of the UK’s national newspapers have more than halved to 6.5m in the past 15 years and are still falling. But it is the continuing drain of advertising that panics investors.
The bosses of free London newspaper City AM have boasted that they are tearing down the boundaries between editorial and commercial by letting brands post articles directly into their website content management system. I can see why they want to play this up. But actually, I don’t think it is nearly as revolutionary (or as ethically dubious) and some of the things big existing publishers already get up to. Former Independent media editor Ian Burrell has the story for The Drum
I am in Ireland to address the Irish Press Council’s annual general meeting in a lecture entitled “Have newspapers got a future?” My theme is that they have no future. Declining circulation figures tell us that people are switching week by week from print to screen. It is simply a matter of time before it becomes unprofitable to continue publishing newsprint papers
Shares in Daily Mail and General Trust, publisher of the Daily Mail, fell by 10 per centon Thursday as it disclosed the toll that the sudden downturn in print advertising is having on its business. It suffered a 16 per cent decline in print advertising revenues in the first half of its financial year
Publisher sees opportunity for the NYT to become an ‘indispensable leader in global news and opinion’ over the next three years
In August last year a consortium of Britain’s leading national newspaper publishers launched an advertising campaign to draw attention to the merits of their titles as platforms for advertising. It was an unprecedented initiative. The very fact that six highly competitive rivals were willing to bury their hatchets showed the depth of the problem. They […]
The Times and The Sunday Times plan to update their apps and a new combined website just three times a day — abandoning the rolling news coverage that has become the status quo for digital publishers
Websites including Le Monde, L’Equipe and Le Parisien join initiative explaining to users that apps starve them of the revenue needed to fund journalism
Stories about the reinvention of daily newspaper companies are often not what they seem. They tend to involve traditional media groups not so much investing in the future of news as placing their bets somewhere else entirely. Thus, the UK’s Daily Mail Group, and Hearst Corp, in the US, are investing more heavily in business media and entertainment. And even Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is now generating 35% of its profit and all its growth from digital property listings
High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/83512944-c35e-11e5-808f-8231cd71622e.html#ixzz3yKqacf7w
an will cut costs by 20 per cent, and could make some of its journalism available only to paying members, after a sharp fall in print advertising hit the newspaper’s financial performance
Roy Greenslade: Am I alone in having noticed the plunging Johnston Press share price? As I write, it stands at just 3.9p, having fallen from 17p less than two weeks ago. That’s a 77% slump
