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HERE IS MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE MSM!!!
Prudential Downgrades The New York Times Co.
By Jennifer Saba
Published: December 07, 2005 5:54 PM ET
NEW YORK Prudential Equity Research Group downgraded The New York Times Co. to "underweight" from "neutral" because the "fundamentals have been worrisome for some time," wrote analyst Steven Barlow in a research note released today.
The reason: The company is lagging behind its peers, it's offering little guidance for 2006, and its capital expenditures could double. "We have no choice but to recommend investors underweight this stock," the report said.
Year-to-date newspaper advertising and total revenue at the company rose 2%. Excluding About.com, total revenue increased 0.7%.
Prudential was not impressed with the company's November performance, singling out the New England Media Group, which recorded a 2.2% decline in ad revenue.
Additionally, the company explained it was not going to give estimates for 2006, though it admitted the upcoming year will be challenging. "This information was in contrast to surprisingly optimistic forecasts provided by four of the smaller market newspaper publishers so far at the conferences," the report said about this week's media conferences in New York.
The research firm also reduced its 2006 earnings per share estimate from $1.60 to $1.5
LOL!!! THE NEW YORK TIMES IS CONSIDERED "UNDERWEIGHT" NOW!!
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."
And there's nothing they can do about it.
Although lib print is failing faster than conservative
and non-political print, all print media is failing.
If the lib rags move to the left, right, up, down,
they'll just lose more existing subscribers faster
than they can recruit new ones.
I belong to the Mid-Atlantic Newspaper Services, Inc. 7.7% is exactly what MANS dropped in November.
good news!!!! Hope they all go under....
Simple demographics will doom the New York-Washington propaganda press. Most readers are 50 or older. As they pass on, so will the circulation and ad revenue.
I believe left wing newspapers will find a niche and survive as shreiking moonbat tabloids screaming to the Marxist choir in the big cities. We have a ways to go before the influence of the left wing propaganda press becomes only a minor squeak in the media world.
It's Bush's fault!
Who says there's no good news?
I am deeply saded.
More writers are taking "volunatary" leave....
The mainstream media gatekeepers of today remind me of that scene in Blazing Saddles where they try to put a tollbooth in the middle of the desert.
F*** Ken Paulson
The problem here is that newspapers, and the mainstream media, simply will not adapt to the changing conditions, to the advent of electronic media, the Internet, etc. They're all trying to dabble in it, but IMHO they don't have a clue of what they're doing, I think both as far as editorial content and advertising sales, they treat it like a useless nuisance or passing fad that will eventually disappear and they can go back to the way things used to be. Of course that isn't going to happen.
I do not think newspapers will ever disappear. But they're not ever going to have the relevance they did for years unless they now and forevermore forget about "the way things used to be" and concentrate on the way things are now, and start offering a product that will appeal to today's consumer. Which means, offering people what they want and what they can't get anywhere else ... and IMHO there are still things, especially on the local level, that newspapers can offer that you can't get anywhere else ... instead of what they want to offer or what they think people ought to have. And to me, that's a bigger problem than bias, an attitude that, "we know best and we're going to give you what we think you ought to have, and if you don't want or like it you're nothing but ignorant Philistines."
For a business populated with liberals ... I'm not going to deny that the bias exists, but I've said here before that my experience is that it's not so much a philosophical left/right bias as it is a bias against all sources of authority ... it's awfully stuck in the mud as far as the way it does things.