Posted on 04/21/2011 7:40:35 AM PDT by jalisco555
The New York Times Company reported a sharp drop in net income in the first quarter as the print advertising market remained stubbornly depressed for newspapers.
The company said net income fell 57.6 percent to $5.4 million, compared with $12.8 million in the quarter a year ago.
The weakness in print advertising, coupled with an unexpected drop in revenue at About.com, led to earnings of 4 cents a share before special items are excluded, compared with 8 cents a share in the period a year ago.
Revenue for the quarter dropped 3.6 percent to $566.5 million. Total advertising revenue declined 4.4 percent, but the performance by advertising sector varied widely. At The New York Times Media Group, which includes the namesake paper, NYTimes.com and The International Herald Tribune, the decline was 1.9 percent.
Digital advertising across the company grew 4.5 percent. As a percentage of the company’s total advertising revenue, digital was 28 percent, up from 25.6 percent a year earlier.
At the New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe, advertising revenue fell 5.1 percent. At the Regional Media Group, which includes local newspapers from Florida to California, the decline was 9.7 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Their new pay wall will save them. Just you wait!/ s
Wow, routinely offend half your potential customer base and the revenue drops. Who’d have believed it possible?
Pinch also announced that NY Times subscribers who make more than $1,000,000 per year henceforth will $10,000/year for their subscriptions. “They make a lot, they’ve been fortunate, so they won’t object to making to possible for the rest of the county to continue to be able to read the Times every day.”
if the Dems still ran Congress I’m sure we’d be looking at a publicly funded NPR for dinosaur print journalism by now
Faster, please.
You bet. There was a lot of talk about it during the last Congress but they never got around to it. Hopefully they've missed their chance for good.
They still made a profit? Oh, fudge. That will only encourage them to keep trying.
Maybe next quarter.
Good Lord, how many more ‘steep drops in revenue’ can these guys take? Soros must be getting tired of bailing them out.
Obama open to newspaper bailout bill
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/59523-obama-open-to-newspaper-bailout-bill
Starve the beast!
A little while ago I came across a copy of the NY Times Sunday magazine and was amazed at how thin it was. In the old days there were pages and pages of ads for high-end real estate and fancy summer camps and boarding schools. Now nada.
GEEEZ!!
Would someone please put a pillow over it’s head and suffocate it already!
ping
NY Times net income fell 57.6 percent to $5.4 million, compared with $12.8 million in the quarter a year ago.
ping
"...led to earnings of 4 cents a share BEFORE special items are EXCLUDED...."
I suspect it's even worse. I'm not going to waste my time digging into the numbers, but anyone remotely familiar with corporate accounting knows that including so-called "special items" ( usually translated as "one-time, non-recurring" are often used to cook the books, as long as the auditors are willing to sign off...which they usually do, unless it's blatantly egregious) could mean that the loss was far greater. It's the TREND LINE that the Times can't escape...
Really shows the trend down..Thanks...Also curious that the big spike UP last year occured about the same time that they were getting rid of Slim’s loan..they obviously “needed” good looking numbers for their new lenders. As I said..you can “juice” the numbers with “non-recurring” items for a year or two..if the auditors agree..but you can’t plug a hole with toilet paper..it falls apart soon.
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