Monday, September 06, 2010
Blogger: Why USAT declines spurred radical reorg
The Poynter Institute's well-regarded business blogger, Rick Edmonds, notes that USA Today's circulation has fallen 20% in less than two years. And the print advertising picture appears to be even grimmer.
"In last Monday's edition," Edmonds writes, "the Sports section had no ads and the Life section, a single quarter-page legal notice. In the entire paper I reviewed, there was one full-page ad for a Pepsi-Pizza Hut promotion, and a two-thirds page announcing the J.P.Morgan/Chase rebranding. The other odds and ends of fractional ads included what may have been a free ad on a TV cancer special and, in my edition, a quarter-page ad promoting the weather coverage on Gannett's Tampa-St. Pete station. Advertising volume builds through the week, but all three of the editions (Aug. 28, 30 and 31) I checked had multiple house ads -- a sign the sales department isn't bringing in enough business to plug the available positions."
26 comments:
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Maybe circulation is down in part because of the lack of content/quality. USAT isn't what it was. Not exactly a great value for readers anymore. So one can blame the circulation drop on the Internet or changing habits of readers, but in my opinion, at least some of that decline is because USAT is just not a very good product anymore. Plain and simple. USAT has contributed to its own demise. Consumers know when they are getting a water-down product, pedestrian stories and graphics, and thin sections. The 20 percent loss coincides with the recession, but it also coincides with all the layoffs, buyouts and forced retirements that have led to the fall of a pretty good paper that might have had a chance to rebound when the economy picks up.
ReplyDeleteAdd the Marriot fiasco and the fact that the paper costs more to the mix. Circulation may be down 20% in that time frame, but I bet circulation revenue isn't down near that much.
ReplyDelete3:53 pm: True on revenue if most losses are hotel copies, which are sold as much as 50% below the $1 cover price.
ReplyDeleteJim, you really are out of touch. Hotel copies copies are sold for less than 50% of cover. All copies. Where have you been? I thought you were a money reporter????
ReplyDeleteIf USA TODAY has fallen 20% I'd like to know how other papers have faired.
ReplyDelete8:24 p.m.: I didn't think ABC allowed a publisher to count copies sold for less than 50% of cover price. Has that rule changed?
ReplyDeleteYes, that rule changed, and not just recently. For a while, you had to breakout >=25% but <50%. Now, you can charge .01 if you want.
ReplyDeleteThe most recent ABC changes will make it easier to sell numbers that aren't up to old standards, but even smaller, local advertisers are in tune to ROI like never before, so the benefit will be short-lived and more dumbing down of the audience measurement will follow. After all, that is easier (and less expensive) than actually meeting readers' needs and building a responsive audience by producing and delivering a valuable product.
ABC Rule has changed . It was 25 % for several years now even lower.
ReplyDeleteThe ABC rule changed to 25% several years ago, and it may be even less now.
ReplyDeleteWSJ or NYT has circulation down, but not a lot. This is because they charge the hotels much cheaper than the copies sold by USA TODAY. WSJ gains because of deep pocket of Murdock. Check it out with the circulation.
ReplyDeleteNot a day goes by where I don't see NUMEROUS house ads in our local Gannett-owned paper. A recent coupon booklet they put out had 14 pages (used to be 32 a few years ago), and almost half of the pages were house ads! How dumb is that?
ReplyDelete@ 12:32 PM
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as dumb as continueing to try and sell an outdated product such as a coupon booklet.
No doubt USA TODAY has its troubles, but too bad Mr. Edmonds picked that day's paper to make his point. It's a shame he didn't pick-up the paper the day the Jeep wrap appeared....and then again the following week for a total spend of almost $2 million. Too bad he didn't see the 2-3 Mercedes-Benz spreads that ran a few weeks ago, or the US Open section also sponsored by Mercedes. Or just take a look at today's edition. Terrific edit....tons of ads.
ReplyDeleteIf USAT is going down, it won't be without a fight. So all you Gannetteers salivating at the prospect of USA TODAY going away....don't get too comfortable. It's gonna be a while!
I for one don't want to see USAT go down the drain. But editorially, that seems to be where it's headed.
ReplyDeleteAnd if so much money was made with those ads, why the upcoming cuts that everyone's talking about?
Why in Gannettland doesn't more income equal a better product?
3:53: That's the spirit!
ReplyDeleteIf everyone had that attitude, we wouldn't be getting beat so badly by the NYT and the WSJ.
No one salivates over the possible demise of USA Today and many of us find it encouraging to hear their ad levels have been higher. But anyone who doesn't get the following point might as well throw in the towel right now: "ITS THE CONTENT STUPID!, ITS THE CONTENT STUPID!, ITS THE CONTENT STUPID! WSJ, NYT and several independently run newspapers are doing a better job surviving this recession because they haven't abandoned a committment to content, which is actually a committment to journalism. Bean counters will dismiss this opinion as simplistically naive. Right. Good luck counting those beans without investing in the seeds to produce them, knuckleheads.
ReplyDelete3:53;
ReplyDeleteobviously, you are one of those people who justify your existence by talking instead of doing. The broad point is total USAT ad pages are down in the neighborhood of 50% or more in the past several years. If you want a fight, go out and fight for the product.
ABC is totally useless, except as a measurement for newspaper publishers to use. If you are a business, you already know your audience reach thanks to the Internet. Internet ads are cheap and provide a count of how many eyeballs see them. ABC figures don't do this, but only report sales (or in some cases, giveaways as well.) So we are not fooling anyone with these phony ABC figures.
ReplyDeleteUSAT was never in the same league as the WSJ and the NYT. And let's throw in the LA Times and the WP into the same mix. USAT was never there.
ReplyDeleteAt one time, though, it was a fairly decent read, but no more. And from Hunke's plan it seems that Gannett has no intention of making it more than a marketing vehicle.
But to succeed, and I want it to, it has to be more. As other posters have said, it's all about content, about hard-hitting news. Sadly, Gannett's community newspaper philosophy of second-rate is good enough has been applied to USAT.
9:50,
ReplyDeleteFight for USA TODAY?
I do.....every single day.
It should amaze me that other posters recognize that the way to get USA Today back on track is to improve the content, yet the publisher and bean counters don't. But it doesn't.
ReplyDeleteWe're getting beat by them in the most important way. National advertising dollars are vanishing before our eyes.
ReplyDeleteThey changed the Promotion Department to Brand Marketing years ago. The problem is, the BRAND needs CONTENT.
ReplyDelete4:32,
ReplyDeleteYou hit on one of our many problems - lack of any kind of marketing at USAT for years and years. Our marketing senior management has been unorganized, under-staffed, and basically in shambles under Lavington. That's why they change the names every few months. I guess that's their version of strategic direction for the brand.
I heard someone say once that Content+Distribution = Brand. As content is weak and distribution is sliding, where does that leave the brand?
ReplyDeleteIs someone really trying to compare a bankrupted, bailed out by hijack New York Times as a success story in comparison to USA Today? Does this blog serve as an outlet for pure fiction?
ReplyDelete