By Greg Gackle, Principal
GAH, Inc.
Lee Enterprises (parent of Quad City Times) suspended its dividend last week, triggered by the decline of its stock price and worsening debt ratios. The newspaper chain’s stock price fell below $1.50 a share in trading this week.
While management sounded confident the company’s debt ratios would improve sufficiently in 2009 to allow reinstatement of the dividend, a Deutsche Bank analyst gave Forbes magazine a more pessimistic view.
The newspaper chain also is cutting company matching contributions to employee retirement accounts, suspending profit-sharing with most employees and suspending corporate executive bonuses for a year.
Figures from the newspaper industry’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) for the first half of 2008 showed an accelerating slide, a decline of 4.6 percent compared to a 2.6 percent rate of decline for the first six months of 2007.
One of the bright spots for Lee was a 1.6 percent weekday circulation increase at the Quad City Times to 50,820.
If the audit bureau numbers don’t leave you with a negative feeling about the newspaper business, here are a couple other items in just the past two weeks:
• The Christian Science Monitor will cease publication of its Monday through Friday newspaper and offer only an online edition come April. It is the first national newspaper to end its print edition altogether. Monitor subscriptions have fallen from a high of 220,000 in the 70’s to its current 52,000 circulation.
• Gannett, which owns the Des Moines Register and 84 other daily newspapers, announced it would cut an additional 3,000 jobs in December. That’s in addition to 1,000 positions trimmed in August by the chain.
Tough times at the roulette wheel, too
Isle of Capri Corp. executives are taking a 25 percent pay cut, according to Rueters News, as the economy and increased gambling competition cut into revenues.
Bernard Goldstein, founder of the Isle of Capri and former Bettendorf resident, earned $543,000 last year, Rueters reported. Goldstein stepped down as chief executive officer last year, but remains as chairman of the board. His son Robert is an executive vice president of the gambling enterprise. Isle stock was down to $3.46 per share this week. In April 2006, the stock hit a high of $33.86.
Newspapers out of presidential ad loop; Obama campaign spends $8 million on web ad buys
Local newspapers were filled to the brim with political news this election season as well as many ads for local politicians, but neither presidential candidate relied on regional or local newspapers advertising. A sign of the changing political advertising landscape was Obama’s campaign spending nearly $8 million on web ads (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, news web sites and other ad networks). McCain hasn’t released a list of his expenditures yet. Television - as was apparent in both local and national campaigns - remains the number one choice for reaching out to voters.
November 12th, 2008
by Greg Gackle, Principal
© GAH, Inc.
The Dispatch/Argus/Leader Newspapers has now shortened its moniker after the last Leader newspaper rolled off the press earlier this month.
The free distribution weekly, which claimed the title of largest circulation weekly in Iowa, ended a 22-year run because of declining ad revenues and increasing newsprint/distribution costs.
When it began, the Leader prompted speculation it might be the first step in a cross border newspaper war between the Illinois-based Dispatch/Argus newspapers (owned by Small Newspapers, LLC) and the Iowa-based QC Times (Lee Enterprises). While it provided another information outlet for Scott County residents, it never moved to compete on a daily basis with the Times on the Iowa side.
The continued shift of resources (and readers) from print to online likely made the decision even easier for Dispatch/Argus management.
‘Paid circulation no longer an adequate indicator,’ says Lee executive
In a related matter, Lee Enterprises audience vice president claims new research by the company indicates paid newspaper circulation is no longer “an adequate indicator of our audience strength.”
According to its research, “use of the printed newspaper” among the 18- to 29-year-olds in its newspaper market areas (Billings MT, Bloomington IL, Davenport IA, Lincoln NE, Oceanside/Escondido CA, Madison WI, Northwest Indiana, St. Louis MO, Sioux City IA, Waterloo IA, River Valley MN/WI and Tucson AZ) reached 55 percent in 2008. Among 30- to 39-year-olds, the use of the printed paper was 57 percent; 68 percent among the 40- to 59-year-old group; and 73 percent among those 60 years old and older.
Between the printed newspapers and their online sites, Lee says it reaches 64 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, 67 percent of those 30-39 years old, 74 percent of the 40- to 59-year-old and 60+ segments.
“These findings show the opposite of what is often thought to be true,” said Suzanna Frank, Lee’s vice president of audience on its web site (lee.net). “More people of all ages are reading our printed newspapers as well as using our newspaper online sites.”
“…Because of cross-promotion, users of our online sites have become more inclined to pick up a printed newspaper, where we provide greater context and perspective, as well as portability,” Frank said.
“The traditional measurement of newspaper readership, paid circulation, is no longer an adequate indicator of our audience strength. Although paid circulation has declined across the industry over the last 20 years as a result of many factors, it measures only copies sold, not the number of readers per copy,” she said. “In a way, that’s like trying to measure television audiences by the number of TV sets sold. Our research provides a much truer measure of readership, and it indicates that the increasing popularity of our online sites has led to more readers per copy of the printed newspaper itself.”
WiMAX an apparent ‘no go’
The long anticipated rollout of WiMAX (broadband wireless) Internet service is apparently a “no go.” QCOnline (the online service of the Dispatch/Argus) had announced it would partner with Black Hawk College to offer the WiMAX service in the Illinois QCA back in 2006. Nagging technical problems, however, delayed implementation the following year, and now all information about WiMAX has been removed from the company’s web site. Emails to the QCOnline support staff about WiMAX weren’t answered.
Worth of median newspaper web site estimated at $3.5 million
A new report by Borrell Associates and BIA Financial Network estimates the worth of the median online newspaper web site at $3.5 million. The median value of a television outlet web site is estimated at $3.1 million, while the median value of a radio outlet web site is estimated at $1.2 million. The same report says local newspaper online site revenues have grown more than 33 percent in the past five years and will total $3.7 billion this year.
October 23rd, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
by Greg Gackle, Principal
© GAH, Inc.
Reality is catching up with the hype on “mobile marketing” - the idea that potential customers would seek services (and you as a business would target advertising) to those “on the go” in the mobile world.
At nearly ever turn on a recent family trip, we “consulted” our phone to access the Internet for not only directions, but menus and customer feedback/reviews on places to eat and visit. Seeking a local bakery, we found a very good pastry shop within a few minutes of our hotel. The feedback on the phone web application Urban Spoon gave the pastry shop a 7 out of 10 rating and it was every bit as good as advertised.
Most businesses have figured out how important it is to have a web presence, but companies providing such impulse or on-the-go services need to make their sites easily accessible to mobile phones and provide the kind of information and references mobile shoppers are seeking.
Daytrotter traffic skyrockets local music site to 25,969 ranking
The audience of popular local music web site Daytrotter.com – founded by Sean Moeller (a writer for the Quad City Times) - has topped more than 61,000 unique visitors per month, ranking 25,969 by web site measurement firm Quantcast. Not bad for a two-year-old site without a major corporate sponsor or links to major media sites.
The site provides free mp3 downloads of songs (more than 4 million to date) recorded by bands traveling through the Midwest.
Quoting from the site:
“. . . These fine people – as they’re traveling through America’s heartland – take two hours out of their travels between shows to stop in for a Daytrotter Session at Futureappletree Studio One in downtown Rock Island, Ill. The name of the city is not ironic. They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments. These songs are them as they are on that particular day, on that particular tour – dirty and alive.”
The site has gotten mentioned in Rolling Stone and Wired magazines, and been the subject of articles in the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and Des Moines Register.
Moeller and his Daytrotter.com site may trail the ranking and audience of the QC Times web site (the top local news site ranked 8,975 with a monthly audience estimated at 183,000), but it may just be a matter of time before it overtakes local news sites based on its current visitor trajectory and the popularity of free mp3 downloads.
Recent QC web site rankings and audiences with unique visitors monthly in parentheses, according to Quantcast:
DEERE.com - 1,366 (1.1 million)
QCTimes.com - 8,975 (183,000)
QCOnline.com - 13,431 (94,000)
WQAD.com - 19,267 (61,000)
SCOTTCOUNTYIOWA.com - 21,932 (53,000)
KWQC.com - 22,870 (50,500)
DAYTROTTER.com - 25,969 (61,400)
QCFSBO.com - 57,235 (19,700)
RUHLHOMES.com - *no ranking provided (20,155)
MELFOSTERCO.com - *no ranking provided (10,800)
QCHOMES.com - 108,749 (10,200)
WHBFTV.com - 132,437 (8,200)
October 13th, 2008
Rarely a week goes by that our office doesn’t receive a phone call or two from software development companies in India. Can we help you with a web site development project?
At one point, we sent them a project to quote to find out what they would charge. The number of hours came in about the same as it would take us to develop, but the hourly cost was one fourth what we charge. Their message to us was: “charge the client your prices and send us our 25 percent.”
Outsourcing software development to India and other offshore locations isn’t new among the Fortune 500 companies. Even Deere & Company has built a software development office in India.
But outsourcing of web site development to India by smaller “local” web firms is a different matter, particularly if the client paying the bill doesn’t know about the offshoring of their site/work.
Zillow, newspaper consortium extend real estate ad deal
The newspaper consortium (which includes Lee Enterprises ) has agreed to extend its relationship with real estate site Zillow for reciprocal online ad sales.
Under the new terms, the consortium of nearly 300 newspaper sites (including the QC Times site) will be able to sell local ads on Zillow’s site and Zillow will be able to sell display ads to appear on the newspapers’ sites.
The newspapers’ can target ads on Zillow to searches for real estate in particular communities or neighborhoods, while Zillow’s ads on the newspaper sites may appear not only in the real estate section but throughout the site.
Zillow is hoping to attract national advertisers by boosting the reach of its online site, with 5.4 million unique visitors, to a combined newspaper online/Zillow reach of more than 63 million unique visitors per month. By targeting users who are likely to have purchased a new home, Zillow hopes to interest national advertisers offering products which new homeowners are likely to need/want.
And, by partnering with Zillow, the newspaper sites hope to simplify online ad buys for large national advertisers while increasing the prices they can charge for their online ad inventory.
‘Average’ web user views more than 1,500 pages per month
According to Nielsen Online, the average web users viewed 1,527 pages and spent 32.5 hours online during the month of July.
The number of web sites (domains) visited per month, however, remained unchanged from the previous month at 69. For more details view the Nielsen Global Index Chart.
Greg Gackle, President/Principal
GAH, Inc., 2415 Eighteenth Street, Bettendorf, IA 52722
Web Design & Development | Publications & Public Relations | Corporate & Brand Identity
Phone 563.355.8074 | gah@gah.com | www.gah.com
© GAH, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
September 12th, 2008
An association of online publishers, unsurprisingly, have released a study saying local news sites are more likely to result in consumer clicks than web portals like Yahoo or Google.
The Online Publishers Association reports it found a 46 percent click rate by consumers on local newspaper sites, compared to a 37 percent click rate on Yahoo or Google.
The local news sites also scored higher than portals in the response to a quesiton on trustworthiness of local newspaper sites (56%) versus portals (53%).
Also for filing under ‘not surprising’
The American Press Institute says newspapers should do more to develop ways to make more money off their online properties. The “Newspaper Next 2.0″ report mentions several new innovations by newspapers to extend their presence and income from the web, including the local Dispatch/Argus (QCOnline.com) rewards site, Deliveringqc.com.
The qconline offshoot enables local advertisers to offer coupons, which consumers can redeem for discounts. The “catch” is that only newspaper subscribers can register and download the coupons.
Here’s how the site puts it:
“Make no mistake, DeliveringQC.com isn’t just another website open to whomever happens to venture onto the site, it is reserved exclusively for Dispatch/Argus readers. While anyone can browse the site, only members can take full advantage of all the huge money saving opportunities that are promoted and available only on this site.
DeliveringQC.com is all about the Quad-Cities. It’s all about hard-working people that live here in the Quad-Cities. It’s about taking back control of our pocketbooks. It’s about raising our lifestyle through smart purchasing decisions and savvy habits.
If we saw a $50 bill lying on the sidewalk, we might be tempted to pick it up. If we saw several lying in the road, we would be thrilled. DeliveringQC.com is like finding a $50 bill or more each week for the taking, all we have to do is act and we take the first step in improving our financial situation.”
The site screens users by requiring them to input the telephone number, used on their Dispatch/Argus newspaper subscription record/form, in order to register on the site.
August 29th, 2008
One of the more spectacular stock declines in this Bear market has been Quad City Times parent Lee Enterprises. In less than a year, the stock has lost 80 percent of its value, falling to less than $3.25 a share. The stock has since “rebounded” to around $4 a share.
According to Forbes, the stock is at a 27-year low and Editor & Publisher reports the company’s largest institutional investor, Chicago FMR LLC, jumped ship in early July. Lee isn’t alone in newspaper chains being devalued by Wall Street, but its decline has been unusually precipitous even as it has been announcing online partnerships with Yahoo and revenue gains from its online division.
Economic woes expected to boost ad shift to online
According to ZenithOptimedia (owned by ad agency giant Publicis), the economic downturn will translate into more online ad spending as more firms look to make the most of their advertising budgets and seek to better track advertising performance with online buys.
The agency also forecasts the economic woes which hit housing and car sales will expand to other sectors. Zenith predicts newspapers will lose the most market share to online advertising, declining from 28 percent in 2006 to 24 percent by 2010.
Flash searchability to boost use of dynamic content
Google and Yahoo’s announcement to make Flash (Adobe’s dynamic software) searchable didn’t make a big media splash, but the ability to index Flash web sites is expected to have a big impact on users and web developers.
Flash has always been great software to animate web content and provide a “rich media” user experience. The big drawback has been Flash sites didn’t rank high in search results because they were not crawlable by Google/Yahoo bots which index Internet content.
Widgets and RSS feeds make for convenience and shift from ‘pull’ to ‘push’
RSS feeds and widgets (applications which deliver web content to your personal webpage) are growing in popularity and could cut into ‘page views’ and ad revenues of many web sites and blogs.
You don’t have to look much further than Google Reader (which delivers RSS feeds) to your personal Google page to realize the impact RSS and widgets could have on site traffic. Having RSS feeds from a half dozen news sites on my Google page, I often scan the headlines (and first sentence of the article) before visiting the originating site. Many times, I don’t bother to visit the site after seeing nothing of interest.
Widget and RSS feeds help to more widely distribute content, but sites which rely on “page views” and banner click throughs for ad revenue could see fewer visitors and less ad revenue. Some news sites already have taken note of viewers who don’t directly visit their sites and have begun embedding ads along with the news feeds.
July 24th, 2008
An online firm providing placement of web television ads is now offering online web video production service. You’ve seen the pitches from on-demand printers who offer customization of stock postcards and brochure layouts. Now a company called Spotrunner is offering similar customization of stock video for company web commercials/ads. Pick out your market area, select from a variety of stock footage, send them your unique information/logo and hit the “return” button. Prices start at $500 for the video spot; not bad if you’ve priced hiring a video production crew lately. The cost of placing the video banners on various web sites is additional.
Yellow Page directories and others have jumped into Internet video ads/commercials. Look no further than the City of Bettendorf’s homepage to see some of the results. Through partnerships with chambers, cities and civic groups, such companies use existing video and artwork/logos to put together short videos linked to a business’ web site.
Web video and sports broadening reach
Streaming of sports live via the Internet is gaining popularity on all levels. For the Iowa High School boys basketball tournament, $9.95 would buy you a live webcast of the quarterfinal or semifinal games (The finals were broadcast on network television and weren’t available online). For the NCAA men’s tourney, you can watch all of the games free online. . . if you either sign up early (get a VIP pass) or tune in before the CBS Sportsline servers are filled up with viewers.
QC Times Online Editor get print edition facetime
In an apparent effort to get some “facetime” for its online editor and added visibility for its online entity qctimes.com, the newspaper’s print version recently featured a daily front page “flood” article by Online Editor Jim Gale. In the daily column, Gale traveled to various area river locations to observe flood levels. . . more easily accessed and monitored via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ online river levels web page.
iphone a travel necessity
A recent family trip to a large metro area gave me a chance to find out how useful an iphone can be. Need to locate a coffee shop near the hotel, just do a quick search. Want to find out what restaurants are within walking distance. Search on the phone. Are the restaurants open and what is the menu? View the restaurant web site on the phone. How far is that museum from our current location? Check the phone. More useful than any hotel room magazine and more detailed than any city visitor map. And, our taxi driver from Dubai confirms the mapping/usefulness of the iphone is just as good in foreign countries.
Greg Gackle, President/Principal
GAH, Inc., 2415 Eighteenth Street, Bettendorf, IA 52722
Web Design & Development | Publications & Public Relations | Corporate & Brand Identity
Phone 563.355.8074 | gah@gah.com | www.gah.com
© GAH, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
If you prefer not to receive future GAH Briefings, reply to gah@gah.com
Visit this link for the online newsletter version, http://www.bettendorf.com/gahbriefing/?p=32
March 24th, 2008
A small technology advance in our household ‚Äì a wireless network ‚Äì has me once again rethinking why I subscribe to the local newspaper. More mornings than not lately, I’ve read the latest local (and not so local) news on my son’s laptop at the kitchen table before the paper hit the front door.
And, as I watch our newspaper delivery guy brave the snow and subzero temperatures to drop off the morning paper, I can’t help question the enormous energy and expense newspapers expend each day of the year for a service (news and information) I can access with the click of my finger.
Lee’s Wisconsin paper first to ditch print edition
The Capital Times of Madison, Wis. – partially owned by Quad City Times parent Lee Enterprises – has the dubious distinction as the first daily newspaper to end its print version in favor of an Internet-only edition. The 17,000-circulation afternoon paper will continue to publish two free print editions each week in addition to maintaining its online news site. The move will result in a reduction of 60 positions at the Capital Times.
The shift was made easier by the fact Lee and the other Capital Times partner also own the much larger morning newspaper in Madison, The Wisconsin State Journal. The twice-a-week print edition of the Capital Times will be distributed as an insert in the Wisconsin State Journal.
Online ad spending surge continues despite economic woes
Ad spending in the fourth quarter of 2007 was up 28 percent from the same period in 2006 despite the slowing U.S. economy. Fourth quarter online ad spending totaled $7.3 billion, according to IDC. For calendar 2007, online ad spending totaled $25.5 billion, up 27 percent from the previous 12-month period.
Not surprisingly, Google received the lion’s share of those online revenues, nearly 24 percent, according to IDC, followed by Yahoo at 11 percent, Microsoft at 5.6 percent and Fox Interactive Media at 3 percent.
Newspaper group forms online ad network seeking greater share of Internet ad spending
Major newspaper chains Tribune Co., Gannett, Hearst and the New York Times recently launched a new online ad network – QuadrantOne – in an effort to garner a greater share of online advertising revenues. Advertisers will have access to 27 major markets and 50 million people a month through the QuadrantOne network.
The new network is notable for the absence of any partnership with the leading online players ‚Äì Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. Last year, Lee Enterprises and 12 other newspaper chains entered into a partnership with Yahoo which gave Lee access to Yahoo’s ad-serving technology for managing and targeting online ads. The move was seen as a way to help the newspaper partners attract more national advertisers to their online newspaper sites. In return, Yahoo received access to the newspaper partners’ news content.
February 25th, 2008
I received an iPhone for Christmas and a month of use has convinced me Apple only called it a phone to remove any association with the ill-fated Newton handheld computer.
I’ve used it to make phone calls, but the vast amount of time spent with the device has been checking the Internet and email, and using the mapping, weather and stock widgets.
The device for Internet browsing is slow-going over the AT&T Edge network, but the growing availability of Wi-Fi in the community makes it a very fast and convenient on-the-go web device. Did you know even the Hy-Vee Food Store on Devils Glen and Middle has free Wi-Fi service available? The Wi-Fi connections are automatic, so there’s no fiddling needed other than to choose which network you want to use.
Another smart move by Apple and AT&T was to bundle data with voice service and make the data service unlimited. No worries about using the device where ever and whenever you’re out and about.
And, one more thing. The Google maps widget for locating businesses/addresses and finding directions anywhere is truly amazing. Coupled with satellite imagery overlays, you can navigate at the city block level viewing buildings, roads and intersections while getting detailed turn-by-turn directions.
And, while we’re talking about mobile Internet
The wait for an industrial strength Wi-Fi network (WiMAX) in the Quad Cities is nearly over.
Quad Cities Online is in the final phase of testing its WiMAX (Nortel) network installation. The QC Online network will utilize three base stations at Black Hawk College, downtown Moline and downtown Rock Island, and can provide wireless broadband coverage to a large geographic area (yet undefined by QC Online) with much less equipment than Wi-Fi networks serving a similar sized area. For additional info: CLICK HERE.
The speed and pricing options for the WiMax service have not yet been announced. QC Online and others have been offering “line-of-site” wireless broadband for some time, but the WiMAX network should provide much greater coverage and higher wireless speeds for businesses and individuals.
Local news web traffic takes strange twist
A recent check of Quantcast’s web ranking site provided a strange result: WQAD-TV’s site ranked first among local news providers. A closer look at the statistics, though, shows a huge run-up in page views last October to more than 5 million over a three to four week period. The averages of visitors, page views and unique visitors is now back down to a more normal level, but the sky high numbers from back then are still distorting the rankings.
Here is the breakdown of local news sites:
Site | Ranking | Monthly page views | Visits per month | Unique visitors per month
WQAD.com 5105 1.6 million 734,000 573,000
QCTimes.com 7351 3.25 million 820,000 331,000
KWQC.com 28,992 474,000 198,000 77,000
QCOnline.com 38,534 832,000 232,000 57,192
WHBF.com 113,002 92,800 21,200 17,834
For comparision, Deere & Company’s site (deere.com) remains far and away the most visited “local” web site with 31 million pages views, 2 million visits and just over 1 million unique visitors each month. The site ranks 2,491 in the Quantcast model.
Greg Gackle, President/Principal
GAH, Inc., 2415 Eighteenth Street, Bettendorf, IA 52722
Web Design & Development | Publications & Public Relations | Corporate & Brand Identity
Phone 563.355.8074 | gah@gah.com | www.gah.com
© GAH, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
If you prefer not to receive future GAH Briefings, reply to gah@gah.com
For the online newsletter version, click here.
January 25th, 2008
Lee Enterprises’ online initiatives and joint ventures with Yahoo during the past year haven’t reversed a steady decline in the Davenport-based newspaper chain’s stock price. Lee closed this week at $14 a share, down from more than $49 a share in May of 2004 and over $34 a share in February of this year.
Lee isn’t alone among newspaper groups with sagging stock prices. Another partner in the joint deal with Yahoo, the Journal Register Corp., has seen its stock decline from nearly $22 a share in May of 2004 to $2.15 a share this week. Likewise, Belo Corporation is down $6 a share from May of this year, E.W. Scripps is off about $10 from its January 2007 stock price and McClatchy Co. traded this week at $12.83, down from $41 a share in January of this year and $75 a share in March of 2005.
Lee announced its joint venture with Yahoo HotJobs in November 2006, and early this year expanded its alliance with Yahoo seeking to boost online advertising/visitors to its newspaper web sites. More recently, the same consortium of newspaper companies announced they would partner with Zillow.com to broaden the reach of the newspapers’ real estate listings.
For insight into investor concerns driving down newspaper company stocks, click here.
News isn’t good for television either
Newspapers aren’t the only media sector under pressure from the shift to an online world. A recent Nielsen study reports more than half of the coveted 18- to 34-year-old audience isn’t watching television on the television. Those young adults are watching television online or via DVR’s and both venues are sans commercials. For more on the study and insights into the viewing/audience issues facing commercial television, click here.
Coming in 2008, Google’s 10th birthday
Google turns 10 years old on Sept. 7, 2008 and the search engine giant can well afford to throw a large party for its 16,000 employees with its annual revenue of more than $10.6 billion (2006) and net income exceeding $3 billion (2006).
December 21st, 2007
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