Speaking of partisan hacks, it looks like the stock market isn’t the only thing slumping these days…
All Washington’s major daily newspapers saw drops in circulation during the six months ended Sept. 30, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, in Schaumburg, Ill.
The Seattle P-I’s average weekday circulation fell to 117,572, down 7.8 percent. The Seattle Times’ average weekday circulation fell to 198,741, down 7.7 percent. Sales of the Sunday paper, which contains editorial content from both newspapers, fell to 382,332, down 9 percent.
It is interesting to note that while circulation is falling at somewhat the same rate at both the Times and the P-I, the Times lost about 16,600 subscribers over the past six months compared to only about 10,000 for the P-I.
Of course, both of our dailies regularly draw over two million uniques to their respective websites each month, or about 75,000 a day. By comparison, HA has recently been averaging about 100,000 uniques a month.
“100,000 uniques a month”
Well, that blows away the trolls’ argument that I’m the only reader of this blog besides them. I didn’t know I was so popular! Maybe I should run for office.
What does Stefan get? 10 a week? His readers are unique, all right, e.g. “FullContactPolitics” a/k/a former GOP legislative candidate Mark Griswold:
“Congratulations Speaker Pelosi, now let the bombs fall where they may. My prediction: terror attack on domestic soil passenger aircraft within the next six months. Casualties in the 2-300 range. And, unfortunately, maybe that’s just what we need. It’s obvious people don’t remember what happened 5 years ago. Posted by FullContactPolitics at November 8, 2006 10:52 AM”
… but I can’t imagine the audience for this type of material is much more than a handful of Western State Hospital residents.
Seems like Lenin’s Useful Idiot’s propaganda machine, the P-U aka TASS, is tanking. It’s not only circulation, but more importantly ADVERTISING. It is ADVERTISING revenue that is ultimately the vast majority of the bottom-line.
Realtors are advertising much much less. WHY??
Because newspaper advertsing does NOT sell houses! Contractor’s are not advertsing? WHY? Because the building industry is in the tank. Restaurants & Hotels have had to cut waaaaaaaaaay back. Banks, airlines too.
One of the many problems with the PI is they not only don’t know why this is happening, it’s that they don’t know they don’t know!
Okay, I’m jealous. My own little (non-political) website gets only about 3,000 to 6,000 or so unique visitors a month, with some 10,000 or so page views. But we do sell some product directly from the site, and we get a nice conversion rate and take home a little money on the side, so I shouldn’t complain.
I think we may be seeing the death-knell of “image” advertising. Created mostly during the war years of the 1940’s by advertising agencies to justify big ad spending when the consumers couldn’t buy the products due to rationing, large companies became accostomed to investing millions in generic advertising which had the goal of simply making the public feel better about the corporate logo.
But the numbers about the efficacy of such advertising has always been very fuzzy. How much of that money actually results in higher sales? Nobody really knows for sure. If you buy a full-page ad in the newspaper, you might have circulation figures upon which to decide who buys the paper, but how can you know how many people actually opened the paper at all that day? How many people saw the ad? How many people would be affected by the ad and converted into buyers?
But with the internet, you know exactly how many people saw the ad (measured as “impressions”), and conversion rates can be measured in terms of both “click-throughs” and sometimes even “purchases”, if direct purchasing is enabled through the internet.
So I have to wonder how many companies will, as things get tough, continue to pay for advertising through newspapers and magazines of dubious efficacy.
What’s left for the “dead tree” edition of the newspapers?
Car ads can be found on multiple websights. Available real estate can be found on any real esate firm’s linking to the Multiple Listing Service. Personal ads, garage sales, etc. through Craig’s list. The only thing left is EOC employers who are compelled to advertise in the papers.
At least the newspapers are beginning to catch onto the idea of selling advertising content on their websites. For a while, many dinosaur publishers were trying to restrict access to their sites, requiring people to prove they were subscribers or paying a fee to access archived articles. Few do that now, as it doesn’t work. Newspapers have to get back to the idea that they aren’t selling a printed product, they are selling content, and the advertising revenue just piggybacks onto the content, whatever medium it presents itself.
Cynical @ 3: Uh, the P.I. knows all that. And it has nothing to do with editorial content, and little to do with reporting in general. It’s the nature of the electronic media taking over from the old business structure, and all newspapers are suffering.
As for advertising revenue, remember under the Joint Operating Agreement advertising revenue is handled jointly and shared between the papers, as well as printing/distribution costs, according to a formula set by the joint operating agreement, as recently modified in settlement of the litigation which was concluded last year. Even if the P.I. brings in MORE advertising revenue, it’s going to be apportioned by the same formula. So there is limited incintive for either paper to try to out-do each other in terms of attracting new advertising, especially if it just takes advertising from one paper to give to another, as the revenue is pooled.
On the plus side, I noticed today that the Seattle Times has switched Doonesbury back to the comics pages. But the comics are so small there now that it’s hard to read the type.
Of course, some of their editorial comments belong on the comics page also, but that’s another story.
What the hell is a “unique”? Is that a one horned sheep popular in liberal enclaves?
The Seattle Times has cut back on the Letters to the Editor to one maybe two if there small. More will be dropping there subscriptions. Who wants to read a one sided news paper?