I expect the problem of advertising decline in revenue to be twofold. The whole US economy is heading into the garbage can and more advertisement money is heading towards internet ads. It would be interesting to see if revenue has increased on the net side. Overall I think that most businesses are hurting due to the high cost of fuel and are cutting back where ever they can.

And speaking of asteroids. . .

http://www.livescience.com/space/080713-binary-asteroid-2008-BT18.html

(Asteroid Cruises Past Earth ... With a Partner)

Torstar's yearly chart

The media dinosaur has finally noticed the circling vultures that are hovering over its hind quarters. It can't feel the pain from being shot in the a$$ yet, but its starting to panic anyway.

Owners and boards of directors have stopped paying attention to the idiot "journalists" in the front office and have started listening to the screaming of the accountants in the back office. Screaming which has been going on for five or six years at least. Before which was five or six years of increasingly concerned shouting and throwing of pencils.

It can be hard to get an MSM outlet owner's attention, I guess. Messages from the wallet area are slow to reach the brain.

Finally we are seeing some mid-level dead weight getting jettisoned from these companies as they react in knee-jerk fashion to cut costs.

But they are still missing the point. That'd be the point of the spear sticking out of their a$$, which is that the fashion has TURNED. People are no longer willing to pay for DemocRat approved disinformation. They are no longer willing to consume nothing but hate-America propaganda, and they DON'T HAVE TO because there's a big, beautiful Internet out there to surf and find out stuff which is DemocRat DIS-approved.

I predict serious consolidation in the MSM business, as these dinosaurs eat each other. Crashing stock prices and down-sizing (firing everybody!) will accelerate. News readers won't be getting seven figure annual salaries.

However I strongly doubt they will change the direction of their bias. That would require intelligence, insight and balls, none of which are in good supply in MSM land. They are riding Liberalism down in flames, right into the ground. SPLAT!

Speed the day when they auger in.

Newsweek and Time both have identical double-whammy problems:

1. They're both bland and irredeemably boring and consequently not worth the cover price.*

2. They're both completely indistinguishable from each other.

* As opposed to The Economist (always filled to the brim with interesting information no matter whether you agree with it all or not) and, dare I say, our very own Maclean's magazine which seems to have truly blossomed of late.

More lungs for the planet, so how can this be a bad thing?

Transportation costs have risen, eroding profitability. Now what does that tell you about their carbon footprint?

Can we give them a Nobel Prize or something for their very noble sacrifice to save our planet? Send them out with a shiny trinket or a ribbon? "Hero of the Green Revolution"?

the flipside is specialty mags, like say Motorcyclist.

always nice to read how the "shiny new stuff" goes tenths of a second faster than my 1996 GPZ, costs thousands more. the whole thing is a shill for advertisers, takes about an hour to blow through.

there 's something about fine kraft paper in hand, versus pixel image eye candy.

The MSM is like a mutual masturbation society (MMS.) They're having too much fun pleasuring each other to be concerned with the ordinary folk who pay the shot by providing eyeballs that attract advertising $$.

Rush Limbaugh seemed to do OK. But then his thinking resonates with people. He even attracts listeners who, while disagreeing with him, tune in to see what he has to say. Still, when people tune in, advertisers want to be there with their message.

It's amazing that with hundreds of quotes piling up now over the past few years from newspaper executives analysing their demise never is the word CONTENT uttered. But, then, when you've designated yourselves as a priestly caste deliberately sealed off from any feedback when the Reformation comes you're the last to understand what wallops you.

The problem with local newspapers is that they all feed off of the same two or three wire services whose quality and reliability is declining just like theirs. They rotate ad nauseum the same handful of syndicated lefty hacks with one token conservative only per editorial page. When they do a local story it's usually done poorly. J school is about style rather than critical thinking skills. Their predictable herdlike metanarratives and self-imposed pc restrictions are so boring.

When they fail on-line because of all of the above that won't change, no more whining about falling margins, it will be interesting to see what excuses are used next.

A 20% plus drop in one year is not explainable by economic conditions entirely.

These publications are in full revenue meltdown.

Can you imagine being a sales guy for one of these rags going into a sales meeting (if they will even meet with you) and having to explain why it's a good idea to buy space as you show them a chart of your paper's declining readership and the increasing antiquity of the demographic.

Unless the prospect is in the geriatric pharma or adult incontinence product business you have a very demoralizing "no" or "we'll get back to you" in your immediate future.

The spiral down will accelerate as the sharpest and best producing sales agents jump ship to more promising opportunities leaving the deadwood meatball reps who think that their monthly draw and piddling expense accounts are enough to live on.

It's unlikely that they would be given a hard time by a management that's to blame for the declining readership mess in the first place.

Canadian media company ....
Can-West Global death spiral ...............

And things are just as dire on the broadcast side, with layoffs happening across the country. But unlike newspapers, the broadcasters don't highlight their own economic woes.

The government mandated transition to digital television has cost even the smallest stations to make capital investments ranging from $5-10M. On top of that, they've had to operate two full power transmitters during the transition period. While they were upgrading, they naturally chose more automated equipment that helped facilitate consolidation and job losses.

OMMAG it could not happen to a more deserving bunch.

Right on, EJ. Which is why radio is crap these days and nobody listens to it. I get a better song selection and more variety by putting Winamp on "shuffle" with my own cd collection than I get on pretty much any radio station in the Golden Horseshoe.

Be it noted my friends, there are more radio stations available in Hamilton Ontario than -any- American market. We get -all- of southern Ontario right out to Barrie, Kitchener and London, and we get American from Buffalo to Rochester. Which means ten oldies stations, five or six rap, a handful of classical, five or six jazz and a slew of Top 30 stations cycling the same Christina Agulera songs every two hours. It used to be Britney Spears, but she's out now.

I'd sooner listen to my air compressor.

Radio these days is complete crap. I pretty much never listen to it unless I want to know if there's a snow day for my pottery class or something. Not even in the car, which is radio's bread and butter. Plug in the MP3 player, hit shuffle and put your boot down.

You don't even need radio to listen to Limbaugh anymore, you can download podcasts with no commercials in them.

I would miss U. S. News & World Report. Newsweek is nothing but a yellow rag.

One of the dirty little secrets about "journalism" is that it isn't that hard to do. Anyone with a computer and a set of eyeballs can do a reasonable job of it. When Dan Rather and Mary Mapes did their hit job on George Bush's national guard service, knowledgeable people immediately went online to thoroughly discredit Dan and his so-called experts. The beauty of the internet is that common folks with real-world experience can hold forth and provide info that no reporter would know about. A reporter assigned a story is almost always out of his/her element, so they end up quoting sources that may be totally full of it. The liberal bias that pervades the journalist "profession" makes their information even more suspect. Why would I pay a newspaper or magazine for biased, inaccurate information when I can get much better stuff online for free?

"Right on, EJ. Which is why radio is crap these days and nobody listens to it. I get a better song selection and more variety by putting Winamp on "shuffle" with my own cd collection than I get on pretty much any radio station in the Golden Horseshoe."

Crappy radio is what turned me to Talk Radio in Ab. As a rap fan in the 80' & 90's it was difficult to find groups like Geto Boys and NWA listening to the radio, actually the radio just played the crap my parents tortured me with as a youth. I took a job in sales and I was on the road, a day in and my tape deck broke. Lucky for me I found a little show called Dave Rutherford and the rest is history.

Regardless of your music genre listening to the same old rotation is crazy, I mean how many times can you listen to those same old oldies on the rock stations?

This about sums it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvzUdM29_uA&feature=related

Hey you advertisers, advertise here at SDA!