From Media Life Magazine:

Full-year 2009 spending will decline by 14.5 percent, from $189 billion to $161 billion, and that’s excluding the impact of political and Olympic advertising.

During first half alone, ad spending will be off 18 percent.

Though declines will lessen through 2010, with ad revenues declining by 2 percent, any real recovery is still years off. The global media agency predicts a mere 1.0 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014.

Full Story here.

A study by the Inland Press Association shows what you would expect in the largest papers - the last five years were tough. However, revenue increased in daily newspapers with under 15,000 circulation. 

"A triple whammy of declining circulation, advertising and classified revenue has been eroding the profits at U.S. dailies over the past five years, according to a report by the Inland Press Association. The sole circulation group showing a hopeful sign was the under 15,000-circulation category, which actually showed a 2.5 percent growth in gross revenues during the five-year period ending in 2008."

The study shows that, although the trends are not good, most newspapers are still profitable.

"The Trend Analysis average overall shows newspaper operating profits still ranged from more than 8.5 percent to 13.6 percent of gross revenue in all circulation groups except 25,001-50,000."

The Associated Press decided to take steps to begin the process of trying to protect the content being generated by newspapers from being "scraped" or taken from the original website and used, without compensation elsewhere. Read the full story here.

It is a move in the right direction. A little late and a little less aggressive than we would have liked to have seen but you learn in the print industry not to expect bold, innovative, decisive action, especially when a committee is involved. What would have been really impressive is if the AP Board had come up with a plan to monetize the usage of content in unconventional streams. But (trying to be optimistic here) maybe they will get to that in their next meeting.

The Seguin Daily News is a free, tabloid-style daily news magazine that is published every business day in Seguin, Texas.  General Manager Hal Widsten answered Mediabids' questions.

(MB) Five years from now what role will publications like yours serve? For example, some people predict a complete migration to the web for many types of publications. Do you? 
(SDN)I don't believe that print publications will ever completely disappear, but I do believe that if they are to survive they must decide who they're going to serve and stop trying to be everything to everyone.  Our approach is a highly local focus.  We're in the San Antonio metro, 40 miles East of SA, and we let the San Antonio Express News handle all the National and International news, commentary, opinion, comics, TV programs, etc.  We are only interested in what happens in our city first and our county second.  There are plenty of outlets, both print and electronic for all that other stuff, but we're the only publication covering our local city council meetings, county court meetings, band concerts, school news, etc.  I believe that type of specialization is where papers are headed. On the Internet side, for at least the next 10 years I don't think any newspaper can expect to bring in the same revenues from a website that is generated by selling ads on a printed page.   

(MB)What sort of measures has your publication put in place to either conserve costs or boost revenue?
(SDN) We're trying to do both.  We are now in the midst of a complete redesign of the Daily News to maximize the use of every square inch we print.  Since we began, our sales philosophy has been to sell long term advertising.  Our entire rate card is set up to reward the long-term advertiser and punish the short-term people.  We have always had ads on the bottom of our front page and we are working to devise ways to integrate ads into editorial space where they will be seen by greater numbers of people, but at the same time not detract from the editorial copy.

(MB)Looking forward to 2009, do you have any significant changes in store for the new year?
(SDN)We had originally planned our redesign for next year, but we're doing it sooner due to the increasing costs of paper, ink and delivery.

(MB) What was your most successful advertising initiative in the past 12 months?
We managed to keep the paper sold out, or within a percentage point or two of being sold out for the first half of the year.  We publish the same number of pages each day and do not increase or decrease the size of the paper based on ad space.

(MB) Do you have tips for other publications about the best way to integrate print and web sales?
(SDN) I believe we all need to talk with our readers and audiences about what they want from our web pages, rather than listening to consultants tell us what they think we should have.  Our "Football Central" part of www.seguintoday.com  came from a member of our local booster club who suggested we take the weekly football program we did in past years and put it on the internet.  It has been a financial and readership success.

(MB) How does your publication hire and, even more important, retain top sales personnel?
(SDN) We're in a small market.  It is our challenge to find very talented people who are just at the beginning of their careers and help them to get started in both the Radio and Newspaper business.  On the Radio side we have been very successful with this approach and have "graduated" a number of people into larger market situations.  We're still working on that on the print side.