Posted on 02/08/2006 1:40:45 PM PST by abb
Updates to correct the revenue percentage change excluding About.com.)
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- New York Times Co. said Wednesday that January revenue rose 3.2% over the same month last year, but were about flat excluding proceeds from online information provider About.com.
New York Times Co. said advertising revenue rose 3.4%, but was down 0.3% excluding About.com.
"In January, traditionally a light month for advertising, revenues were on a par with those of the same period last year," said Janet Robinson, the company's president and chief executive officer, in a statement.
"While we saw growth in most ad categories at The Times, it was not sufficient to offset the expected decline in studio entertainment advertising, as the studios provided less support to Oscar-nominated films compared with last year," Robinson added. "The [Boston] Globe also saw weakness in entertainment advertising and, in addition, travel advertising."
At the New York Times Media Group, which includes the flagship newspaper, ad revenue rose 0.8%. National ad revenue declined on softness in the studio entertainment, banking and media advertising categories.
Retail ad revenue rose on higher sales in the fashion/jewelry store and fashion/apparel categories.
In classified ads, help-wanted declined - in contrast to reports from most newspaper publishers - as well as automotive, which has been a common complaint throughout the industry.
The New England Media Group, including the Boston Globe, saw a 4.9% decline in ad revenue on lower national and classified ad revenues. Retail was flat.
New York Times shares were up 1% at $28.19 in morning trading.
For what it's worth, my antispyware software tells me that About.com is a spyware site. In fact, it does seem to manage to install cookies on my computer from time to time even though I don't use it.
I don't know how much money the NYT will make on it once people figure out that they are being abused.
Wonder what the numbers would be if they released the TRUE circulation numbers.
About.com is definitely not spyware. I've been working there for 6 years now. We do use cookies, but we only use that information to improve our service by creating content that people are actually interested in based on page view statistics. That's all. We adhere to all privacy standards and never send out spam.
We're basically a free media company providing free information to anyone and everyone. The only cost to you is that your eye is exposed to advertising.
Spyaudit picks it up as spyware cookies. That's the program from WebRoot. I have deleted the cookie a number of times. I've never visited About.com, and it's not my kids doing it, because it turns up in my password protected cookie list, not theirs.
Possibly I may have picked it up following news linked on FR.
There are differences of opinion as to what's spyware and what's not. I'm not sure why they have put this on their list, but it's definitely included.
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