How many UK publishers are living on borrowed time?

Interesting article here from The New York Times. Gives an example of yet another US newspaper closing it's print edition and then goes on to profile how publisher IDG has transformed it's revenue base to become a majority digital business.

How many UK publishers can say they have done the same and how many have proper plans in place to do so? There is much hype around but personally I've seen only a tiny handful that truly get it, know where they need to be and most importantly know how to get there

Still the combination of falling readership, falling ad revenues, growing digital literacy, growing digital ad revenues and an economic slowdown will no doubt expedite the process. So cast your votes; which UK titles are going digital only first and which ones are just going

Matt

Comments

[Jamie Leonard]

Ok Matt, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid and believe the hype but you cant seriously compare the UK and US like for like. UK press has had dominance in recruitment because of the regionality of country and it’s make-up. To put into context, if you want to hit Maitland, Florida (home of the US Leonard clan FYI) you have a few options in print; some crappy local rags, a regional that spans the whole of Florida (The Sun Sentinel I believe) or a national like USA today or The NYT. So Bob the small businessman is royally screwed in print. Option A is to localised for any true gravitas and option B and C has vast wastage. That’s why online has dominated the US for the last 10 years, because it’s highly targeted, has 0 wastage and shows results.

Compare that to the UK market where life is still very local. Big players can still hit local marketplaces with targeted, minimal wastage press campaigns.

I can hear the knuckles cracking now. Don’t get me wrong, online is without doubt taking over, because of innovations from the bigger players, but will we see The Guardian switch to “online only” any time soon? Will we get the call from Damien Tidd next week telling us the print presses have closed down? Not likely.

The pace of online migration in the UK was, is and will be slower than the US for no other reason than……we are a smaller country than they are and we have more print options than any other country in the world, therefore the targeting of best candidate is easier.

Rant over…please start your shooting.

J

[Matt]

Well argued as ever Mr Leonard but I'm afraid all the chemicals from that Kool-Aid just might be effecting your judgement;-) Yes the US and UK media markets are different and yes what you are saying would be valid apart from one thing......readership is generally in free fall....there may be some exceptions but these are again few and far between. This actually means that the UK market has potentially more of a problem than the US. If readership falls revenues always follow (albeit with a big time delay in the UK classified markets) and with a smaller population in the UK and more publications to go round that has to be scary. An inevitable point will come where printing lots of pages every day / week / month is not economically viable in terms of revenues generated and declining response for advertisers. To make things even more interesting Bob the small businessman in the UK has already discovered or is about to discover Google Ad Words and with it comes a new definition of highly targeted and 0 wastage!!

That call might not come next week and it might not come from Damien but it will come sooner rather than later. It's also interesting that the Guardian Media Group as made some recent acquisitions that means it's reliance on print revenues has gone from 85% of it's business to 65%. You might almost think they were planning for something! ;-)

[Jamie Leonard]

Some good points and as always, well argued. I just On a completely unrelated note a commercial property agent friend of mine just told me that a big newspaper group is moving into that new office on York Way near Kings Cross, but they wouldn’t tell him who. Doesn’t look at that big, could be another down size.

[Andrew Douglas]

I work in the office next door and it's a well known fact that it's our pals at the Guardian who are moving into the new lavish facitilty. Sure that was public information about 18 months ago.

Maybe not downsizing per se but would make sense to centralise some of those purchases they've made recently which takes it back to a related point by Matt above.

Quite a neat circle of comments!!

[Simon Devitt]

I think it is interesting to differentiate between when the company "gets it" and when the individual product appears not to.

For instance DMGT clearly get it and their aquisition of Jobsite was a master stroke. Yet their local papers run through Northcliffe often have appeared not to get it. Interesting now how they have combined the strength of Jobsite and the local papers with them working closely together.

Contrast this with some large magazine publishing groups who have taken profits from recruitment for granted for years and are incredibly still apparently nowhere at both the group and product level.

What is interesting with hindsight though is that while I was worrying about the migration of recruitment advertising from magazines this has been relatively slow compared with the decline of display which has not just gone online but to events, sponsorship and email.

The other interesting development is how the readers of controlled circulation magazines have be convinced to buy subscriptions to the best titles in their markets and how publishers are building revenues back from readers where in the past they were more reliant on advertising.

In the end there are likely to be well run magazines and jobsites not a total destruction of either.

[Jamie Leonard]

Cheers Andrew. As usual Im the last one to know the low down. People dont tell me anything anymore because they think I'll post it on MyLongLunch, and they'd be right ;-)

[Jamie Leonard]

On this argument Telegraph Media Groups have just posted an interesting article. www.mylonglunch.com/FYI/#83