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Newsosaur has an excellent article up detailing the NAA’s revelation that Newspaper Ad Revenues declined 29% for Q2, 2009.

The key points -

1. 2009 ad revenues will come in around $27 billion, $10 billion less than last year. 
2. 2008 itself was a bad year with ad revenues plunging 16.6%.  
3. That means in 2 years ad revenues have dropped 40% or so.  

A chart from me showing the trends (note that this is without factoring in inflation) -

Newspaper Revenues Falling off the Cliff

Comparing with past results leads to some rather discouraging facts -

1. As recently as 2006 newspaper ad revenues were $49.3 billion. If 2009 comes in at $27 billion that would be a 45% drop in 3 years.
2. The rate of the decline is accelerating.
3. Factor in inflation for a 3 year period and the $49.4 billion of 2005 is $54.03 billion in 2008 dollars. So the decline in the last 3 years is actually more like 50%.

Newspaper revenues have dropped in half in just the last 3 years.

You can check the various figures at the NAA site.

Newspaper’s share of Advertising Bucks is plummeting

Nieman Journalism Lab have an excellent piece with a Media Share of US Advertising chart that is a must see.

1. It shows that Newspaper’s share of advertising has dropped from 37% to 13% in the last 60 years. 
2. It also shows that TV & Cable have gone from a few percentage points to 26%.  
3. For all the hype, the Internet is still at just 4.75% (although that’s zero to 4.75% in just the last 12 years).
4. Magazines’ share of ad revenues has gone from from 10% to 5% – although the decline in the last 33 years is negligible.

They also point out that Total US advertising has stayed steady at around 2% of US GDP over the last 60 years. That’s really surprising to me.

In summary, while advertising’s share of GDP has stayed steady at 2%, newspapers’ share of that 2% has dropped from 37% to 13%.

Fall in Ad Revenue continues to kill newspapers

Freedom Commmunications, which owns over 30 daily newspapers including the Orange County Register, plans to file for Bankruptcy Protection.

WSJ reports -

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — a popular measurement for leveraged companies — have declined about 75% over the past five years to about $50 million.

The filing is a blow to private-equity firms Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners, which acquired a 40% equity stake in the company in 2004 for about $460 million. They’ve already written off their investment.

Paper Cuts, Newsosaur, and other sites continue to chronicle the death of newspapers. And newspapers continue to provide a lot to chronicle.

Filed under: content, news Tagged: | future of newspapers, lack thereof