BusinessWeek struggles with advertising revenue falls
- BusinessWeek Blues
Early this morning I heard the news on the radio, and couldn’t believe my ears: At my alma mater Business Week, “ad pages declined 18.8% in the fourth quarter and 12.8% for the year.” Naah. Impossible. Can’t be that bad. Then I got the press release and I saw that it is true.
I know that everybody in the business has a pet theory why ad pages have been so crummy for the biz magazines. My theory, which I admit is self-serving, is that there hasn’t been nearly enough hard-hitting reporting. Now, anyone who knew me at BW can tell you that I’ve been saying that for quite some time, even when there was a lot of hard-hitting reporting in the magazine.
Still, I think that readers and advertisers expect more of a “mix” of stories than they have been getting. There are a number of reasons for this, and I deal with them in Wall Street Versus America, and one of them is reflected in those awful numbers — staffing. Reporters who are working to fill the weekly “book” don’t have time for lengthy projects. The magazines are thinner, so there is less space for even routine stories. That, and a reduction in ad pages, results in pressure to reduce the staff still further. It’s a kind of vicious circle.
When you put this together with…
- Ex-BW staffer blogs on ad drop at BusinessWeek
This is the weirdness of blogging in today’s mainstream pubs. I link to a former colleague, Gary Weiss, who is blogging about disappointing ad numbers at BusinessWeek.
The second commment to his post, though anonymous, has the ring of someone who works closely with us:
The hard-hitting reporting you bemoan withered away because of budgetary reasons. Besides the layoffs of the last several years, many of those who left on their own—as you did, Gary—were not replaced. Investigative reporting takes a lot of time and resources, and it’s tough to do when you are budget-challenged.
and then to this…
- The McGraw-Hill Companies Reports 12.8% Increase in Earnings Per Share for 2005: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
“The cyclical decline of advertising in a non-election year led to a 1.7% reduction in revenue to $112.2 million at the Broadcasting Group in 2005 and a 5.6% drop to $32.4 million in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year. An increase in local-time sales enabled the stations to offset part of the decline in political advertising in 2005.
..then you get a picture of things being hard for business magazines. BW in particular has looked notably thin over the past few months - finally leading it to give up having a European edition, and moving only to online for European and Asian subscribers.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Are print publications trapped inside a crumbling business model? (22 December 2004; score: 45.12%)
- Truth in advertising: "Special K : your measurements could reduce by up to 3 inches" (6 July 2005; score: 33.84%)
- So if we don't have paywalls.. what happens when there's an advertising crunch? (26 September 2007; score: 33.72%)
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January 27th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Another signs of BW’s woes is the recent decision to can the European edition.
I have read BW for a quarter of a century or more. It has always struck me as providing better coverage of the business side of science and technology, in all its flavours, than any other business magazine. (I discount The Economist as being terminally tedious in ordering me how to think.)
BW may sometimes give the impression that it thinks that the USA can do no wrong while businesses in every other country are run by morons - European cover stories are often doom and gloom while US inspired covers are ‘inspirational’ - but cut through that and the details are excellent.
I now find that I will have to opt for an electronic version if I want to keep up with developments. I have yet to see if this means using the appalling Zinio service. If so, I will probably go for a refund and keep reading Fortune and the FT.
January 27th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Mike,
Why don’t you like Zinio? A lot of magazines are coming under pressure to use serivices similar to Zinio to keep their advertisers happy and cut their paper costs. I have my own qualms about the service, but I’m interested to know what yours are.
Paul
January 28th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
I don’t like Zinio because the last time I looked it used a format that I cannot search.
I use X1 to index the X000s of PDF files on my PC. If I want to find something that has appeared on “plasmonics” in the IEEE or IoP journals that I keep I can do so in seconds. Unless things have changed Zinio files are beyond the reach of X1.
It is also impossible to view zinio files in third party sofwtare. My alterntive to Winows Explorer has a “preview” option that can show me PDFs and most other formats. Nor can Explorer create a thumbnail.
Why invent a new format when PDF exists?
Zinio may do just what the publishers want. As a user, I hate the format and will not subscribe to magazines that insist on using it.
(Lead for you there Charles?)
January 28th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Does it (BW’s ad decline and thinning page number count) have so much to do with the quality of the reporting? I’m wondering if it has more to do with the fact that BW is a general business magazine. It’s not niche in any kind of way. People still read the printed newspapers because they get the big picture of the news agenda. Meanwhile the publications with a broad vertical approach just fall through because they’re not relevant enough within their segment.
Or perhaps BW just needs to hire better sales people. After all, the ad industry is definitely on a high note these days.
February 8th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
I found you by simply typing in “advertising revenue falls in January”. I am an advertising manager for a small
weekly in Asheville, NC owned by Gannett Inc. I have been in advertising sales for 30 years and it seems to be
harder than ever to get the business person to let loose of that money. They do not seem to be investing as they
once did which in my opinoion is a terrible mistake. I will get the “closing our doors ad”. I am looking to see if
there is any kind of national trend in regards to advertising in a slump nation wide or is it just here?
I hope you don’t mind I ask this of you. I thought I was quite lucky hitting your site.
February 9th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Hi Wanda..
I think the trend in advertising is that it’s moving online. Simple as that. And online is a bigger place, so the ads are harder to corral.
March 5th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I now find that I will have to opt for an electronic version if I want to keep up with developments. I have yet to see if this means using the appalling Zinio service. If so, I will probably go for a refund and keep reading Fortune and the FT.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Zinio is shit. You can’t index with the usual desktop searchers, X1 for example.
I did sign up for electronic Business Week for the rest of my subscription. Weeks ago. Haven’t heard anything from them.
I already take Fortune. (Has anyone read the execrable Forbes vanity publication lately?) But I am edging towards Harvard Business Review. Grown up business journalism