Maybe we need a new keyword for these events like: 2006MSMWARSWOES.
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http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=45541
Tribune Sees Weak Ad Market, Earnings Plummet In Q2
by Wayne Friedman, Friday, Jul 14, 2006 9:20 AM ET
TRIBUNE BROADCASTING'S STATIONS, THE CORE group of the new CW network, has been having a rough time in the first months of 2006 with weak advertising sales. Conditions will only get worse, it says, before getting better. The station group says advertising in the second quarter dropped 1%, and the third quarter will also dip into the low single percentage digits. Tribune says there still exists a weak overall advertising market. But it's not just advertising that is affected. Tribune Company's CEO Dennis FitzSimons says few advertisers are interested in Tribune's prime-time lineup due to the "lame duck status" of The WB, the network that runs on its stations.
This is something analysts warned about at the beginning of the year when the primary owners of The WB and UPN, Warner Bros. and CBS Corp. respectively, decided to merge their networks. Since then, WB's ratings have sunk to big-time lows. But Tribune predicts a turnaround this fall, anticipating that the new CW network will post ratings increases 25% above what the WB posted.
Tribune says advertising categories such as automotive, the biggest TV advertising group, is down. So is another big category: retail advertisers. On the positive side, the movie and the telecommunications businesses are up in TV advertising spending.
All this was part of Tribune's earning release, which reported the media company fell 63% or $85.7 million to $231.3 million in the second quarter. FitzSimons says TV wasn't the only business hurt from a weak ad market-newspaper ads were hit, too. The earnings dive comes amid pressure from Tribune major shareholders to break up its businesses for sale.
The Sun Times would call it DEFCON.
Anyone notice that the number of Spanish language papers, that for many years held between three and four, is now at 7 or 8 in Chicagoland?
For many years the Polish language Daily Zgoda had the 3d largest circulation of any paper in Illinois. Soon it might be REFLEJOS.