Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

I don't believe they would print an "extra" edition.

I believe their sole focus is to force as many people as possible to their website as often as possible, even in an emergency or disaster. It might take a 9/11 type situation to get an extra. A day of tornadoes? I'll bet they would wait until one of their three planned publishing days.

I also think they sorely underestimated the amount of pushback on this plan from readers and advertisers. That will only get worse and then it will stop because people will quit reading anything they produce, and advertisers will stop advertising. Television and radio stations should be licking their chops and combing the newspapers now to make pitches.

 

President gets assassinated on a Friday, will USA Today have a print edition on Saturday? Of course not.

They'll cover it --- on the web. We have to get past this idea that ignoring it in print is ignoring it completely.

 

People will go apeshit, mark my words, the second those three HUGE communities stop publishing a Saturday prep football-a-palooza.

rb

 

The readers will push back for sure, particularly the ones with no Internet access or those who choose not to visit the site regularly. But the advertiser pushback won't be as severe, I'd think. They're retaining the big ad days; plenty only advertise on Wednesday and Sundays anyway. The Monday edition, for example, isn't a deal breaker for most advertisers unless their ads are pegged to NFL coverage.

I don't know that TV and radio can capitalize but so much. The nature of the advertising is distinct enough that it's not going to translate. A half-page ad that doesn't disappear after publication isn't the same as a 30-second spot that disappears as soon as it's over. Not that they won't try, but they're not likely to make TV advertisers out of companies that have only done so via print. Alternative publications might snag a couple, but usually they serve a distinct audience that may not be very attractive to the alienated daily advertiser.

This obviously sucks and doesn't appear to be a very good way of making the transition to online-first. That said, I wonder what the right formula is for moving over. Is there one? Do we concede that online-first requires fewer editorial employees? How many is a reasonable cutback? Will there come a time where an online-only or online-heavy publication adds to headcount? Or is this going to be like the transition from brick-and-mortar video rental stores to NetFlix/online/kiosks?

 

And on the flip side... there are these days...

Monday for Tuesday Monday for Tuesday Monday for Tuesday




Just do a special edition, you say? What happens if they lose? Do they cancel the print run? Stories? Ads? Other sections? Tell the distribution people never mind?

Special section for the next publication date

 

Exactly.

Do you think the folks that run the presses & deliver the paper are just sitting around, waiting for you to call them in to put out, and deliver the paper? If you want folks to be "on call", you need to pay them just to be available. Do you think newspapers, who are looking to cut costs, are going to do that?

Many of your employees won't even be available, as they'll need to take second jobs to bay the bills.

Now, since most papers rely on subscription sales, and not newsstand sales, who's going to pay for this "special edition"? You can't bill the customer, just because you decided to deliver him an extra paper.

What ads are going to run in this "special addition"? Since the paper wasn't planned, no ads have been sold for it, and since it was a last minute decision to publish, there isn't any time to sell ads.

So, we're going to produce a "special edition" that will cost us extra, and bring in no revenue? You really think someone is going to do that?

If anyone does put out such an issue, it will be done on some sort of extremely limited addition basis, and they'll sell them after the fact as collectors items.

 

Are people picking up days old newspapers and viewing half-page ads again and again? I don't think so.

Also, do you realize how cheap radio advertising is in small markets? You can get your ad played a lot, for not too much money. And, it's important people hear/see your ads multiple times to generate sales. Radio can deliver this. A three day a week newspaper can not.

Radio will also produce your ad, and will have their talent read it. (And, their talent is often a "trusted voice" in the community.)

For a decent ad, they'll do all kinds of promotions. They'll have you in the studio to talk about your product/service/store/restaurant.

For a bigger buy, they'll do a live remote from your location, and include you in other events they're involved in.

If you buy live sports, they'll give you live reads between pitches or plays.

Radio is one of the best media buys you can make.

 

You're right. We're going internet first, with a printed paper just as a desert.

 

No, people don't keep ads around for days and days (Sunday circulars and Wednesday grocery ads excepted). But once you read an ad in the paper, it doesn't go away. It's there to reference as long as you need it, until you throw it away or wrap your fish in it. If there's something in that ad you want to keep, a coupon or a menu or the Roto-Rooter's phone number, you cut it out and keep it, again for as long as you need it.

Not all ads translate to radio. A car dealer isn't going to list all his NEVER BEFORE SEEN PRICES ON USED CARS HURRY NOW YOU'LL NEVER GET THESE DEALS AGAIN prices on a radio or TV spot, because he's only got 30 seconds. He still needs some form of print ad to list get that message across. Maybe not as much of an ad buy as 10-20 years ago, but there's still car ads in the paper for a reason.

Do live remotes move the needle at all? I have radio friends who work remotes on random Saturdays and they say any benefit for either party isn't immediately obvious. Maybe the business's name stays in the customer's mind more often after hearing the remote, and maybe someone eventually buys a car out of that, but unless they come out and tell you that they came to this dealer and bought a car because of the remote, I wonder if they do much good at all.

Don't forget that radio is having its own medium-shifting crisis as well. With the advent of satellite radio and in-dash sound systems that allow for mp3 players and Internet radio station/Pandora/Spotify streaming, terrestrial radio has many of the issues newspapers have in retaining customers.

It seems if you're trying to do something more substantial than get your name out there, radio and TV doesn't help that much. Especially if you're a smaller advertiser whose budget doesn't allow for a very big buy.

 

FM music programming is hurting.

AM news/talk/sports can't be replaced by streaming services. It's why you see more and more FM stations moving to news and talk.

And, people listen through the ads, because they want to hear the host, the news, or the sporting event.

Folks constantly change stations on FM music stations, looking for a song they like -- or just listen to Pandora or some other internet/streaming service.

 

My father-in-law, who has read the News every day I've known him for 17 years, has already subscribed to The Advertiser, and has already cancelled his News subscription.

 

I would think the talk market is fairly small. Even on Sirius XM, which offers most every national sports, news and opinion network and host of consequence, it's still a fraction of the programming offered, even including niche programming that you'll never see over-the-air, like plays and audiobooks and old-time radio shows. In my market we've had at least one prominent talker flip to a music format, and one sports talker is widely believed to be giving up the format imminently. Of the top 20 stations in the Arbitrons, one is talk and one is sports. Everyone else in well under 1.0. FM stations may try to flip to news/talk or sports, but unless that market is underserved, a lot of them will have to try again with music sooner rather than later.