New Magazines: The numbers for the first trimester

"Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993

Precision Media Group "What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books."  Thomas Carlyle quotes (Scottish Historian and Essayist, leading figure in the Victorian era. 1795-1881)   New Magazines: The numbers for the first trimester Samir Husni (Blog) http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/     Flower is but one of 202 magazines that were born in the first trimester of 2007. Two trends appear to go hand in hand for the first four months of 2007 when it comes to new magazine launches: the first is the drop in the number of special issues and one time publications (almost 33% drop from last year); and the second is the drop of the number of magazines with a frequency of four times or higher (almost 20% drop from last year). As I mentioned earlier on this blog, this is NOT an unnatural occurrence in the field of magazine publishing. Every few years we see a market correction and the numbers drop. It is not new. This market correction has happened every few years, both before and after the birth of the internet. However, the silver lining in all of this is that the number of magazines with four times frequency or more is closing the gap with the numbers of the specials and one-time titles. So, here goes the numbers (at least for now as we keep on updating the numbers as we receive titles we've missed) for this year compared to the numbers of last year. In the first trimester (Jan. through April 2007) at least 202 new magazines were launched with the following frequencies: Four times or more, 79 titles (100 in 2006), Specials, 104 titles (155 in 2006), Annuals, 12 titles (25 in 2006) and the remaining seven titles were published either two or three times a year. For a complete list of all the titles of the first trimester click here.     The VIP Factor in MagazinesMay 4th, 2007 For years I have been telling my students and my clients that the Visual Impact in Print (the VIP factor) depends on marrying the photography with the typography to create a visual impact that will stop you and make you pick up the magazine. Well, today while scanning the newsstands I found a great example of how not to achieve that impact. In fact it was just the opposite. The cover of the new special from Cook's Illustraded magazine on Summer Grilling & Entertaining stopped me in my tracks for the complete wrong reason. Summer grilling screams the name and berry pie screams the picture . . .My brain kept showing me images of a grill and barbecue and my eyes kept showing me a delicious cold pie ready to eat . . . confused by the mixed messages I started to walk away, but then I remembered it is a first issue that I need to add to my collection plus, I thought, it will make a great blog on what NOT to do with your magazine cover. Well check the cover for yourself. It is grilling below this blog . . .     Precision Media Group email: bosacks@aol.com phone: 518-329-7994 web: http://www.bosacks.com Blog - http://bosacksarchive.blogspot.com/ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of The Precision Media Group. Print, Publishing and Media Consultants  Contact - Robert M. Sacks 518-329-7994 PO Box 53, Copake NY 12516

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How to Sink a Newspaper

"Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993

Precision Media Group "Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego"  Jack London quotes (American short-story Writer and Novelist whose works deal romantically with elemental struggles for survival. One of the most extensively translated of American authors. 1876-1916) How to Sink a Newspaper By WALTER E. HUSSMAN JR. May 7, 2007; Page A15 http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB117849835415093994-lMyQjAxMDE3NzA4NzQwOTc4Wj.html One has to wonder how many of the newspaper industry's current problems are self-inflicted. Take free news. News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service. Not many years ago if someone wanted to find out what was in the newspaper they had to buy one. But not anymore. Now you can just go to the newspaper's Web site and get that same information for free. The newspaper industry wonders why it is losing young readers. Those readers might be young, but many of them are smart, not to mention computer-savvy. Why would they buy a newspaper when they can get the same information online for free? Newspapers initially created their Web sites with the best of intentions. After all, newspapers are in the information business. And rather than fight the new medium, the Internet, why not embrace it? Wanting to be the leading information providers and thereby have the most popular Web site in the community, they posted all of their news online for free. Exacerbating the problem with free news was the decision by the newspaper industry, which owns the Associated Press, to sell AP copy to news aggregators like Yahoo, Google and MSN. These aggregators created lucrative news portals where the world could get much of the news that was in newspapers. So readers could now get free news not only on newspaper Web sites, but also from portals and aggregators that had a chance to monetize the content, most of which was created and financed by the newspaper industry. With local radio and television stations also creating Web sites and posting their news for free, newspapers soon realized that much of the news on the broadcast Web sites had been created by the local newspaper. So, whereas before the newspapers were selling print ads while radio and TV were selling air time, now they were all selling the same medium: their Web sites. Since newspapers share their content with the Associated Press so other members can use it, radio and TV members are using much of that content to compete against the newspapers that created it. Newspapers have for years been frustrated by radio stations which merely read the stories which are printed in that morning's edition. TV stations often get much of their news from the newspapers, too. But reading it on the air is clearly different from posting it online, placing them in direct competition with newspapers' Web sites. All of this would be fine if newspapers generated lots of additional revenues from offering free news. But the fact is newspapers generate most of their online revenues from classified advertising, not from news. Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, estimated that newspaper Web sites generated 78% of their revenues from classifieds in 2006. It turns out that a Web site is a very different medium from a newspaper. While consumers often find pop-up ads a distraction and banner ads as more clutter, readers often seek out the advertising in newspapers. The Inland Cost and Revenue Study shows that newspapers will generate between $500 and $900 in revenue per subscriber per year. But a newspaper's Web site typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor per year. It may be that newspaper Web sites as an advertising medium, and free news, just can't generate the revenue to sustain a valued news operation. In fact, online revenues for the publicly traded newspaper companies in 2005 varied from 1.7% at Journal Register Co. to 5.7% at Belo Corp. The only company higher was the Washington Post Co. at 8.4%. Yet newspapers typically spend 12% or more of their revenues on their news and editorial operations. The Wall Street Journal Online now has 931,000 paying subscribers, more than the paying subscribers to all but three U.S. newspapers: USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Our newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, does not offer our news for free on the Web site. We offer free headlines. On a few selected stories, we offer a few free paragraphs, designed to get people to read our paper. We also offer free classifieds. Recently I had the opportunity to compare our Web site policy with the free news policies of other papers. For the six months ending March 31, 2007, the newspaper industry's circulation was down 2.1% daily and 3.1% Sunday. By contrast, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's circulation was up 1.24% daily and up less than 1% Sunday. I was able to make another interesting comparison, too, with the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Columbus and Little Rock are both state capitals. Columbus is a larger market, and the Columbus Dispatch's circulation of 217,291 compares with 176,172 for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Up until Jan. 1, 2006, both our paper and the Columbus Dispatch offered news content only by subscription. We even charged the same price, $4.95, for an online monthly subscription, and both of us offered the same style electronic editions. But Columbus dropped its subscription model on Jan. 1, 2006, and began offering most of its news for free. Its Web traffic and revenues certainly increased. But what happened to its paid circulation? The six months ending Sept. 30, 2006 was a good comparison, since it compared six months in 2006 when the Columbus Dispatch had free news on its Web site compared with six months in 2005 when it did not offer free news. The Columbus Dispatch's daily circulation was down 5.8% while Sunday was down 1.1% for the six-month period. This compared with our loss of less than 0.4% daily and 1% Sunday. When I looked at this comparison with Columbus, as well as the newspaper industry's larger losses, it didn't encourage me to change our Web policy to free news. So what are we doing with our Web site? We have hired a videographer to complement our text coverage in the newspaper. We have added photo galleries to increase the number of photographs beyond what we can publish. We offer an electronic edition where you can search the entire edition by keywords, something you can't do in the print edition. And we offer breaking news email alerts, something else you can't do in print. In other words, we are offering value on our Web site that complements, rather than cannibalizes, our print edition. Collectively, the American newspaper industry spends $7 billion on news and editorial operations. This includes everything from copy editor salaries to sports travel expenses. In addition, the Associated Press spent about $600 million world-wide in editing and creating news. By offering this news for free, and selling it to aggregators like Google, Yahoo and MSN for a small fraction of what it costs to create it, newspaper readership and circulation have declined. These declines are accelerating. In 2004 and prior years, industry circulation declines were usually less than 1%. Since March 2005, these declines have been 2%-3% per year. With declining readership comes declining ad revenues, which are followed by layoffs. The newsroom layoffs are most troubling, as less news with less quality, context and details results in more declines in readership and later, declines in advertising. If the $7 billion spent covering news becomes $6 billion, and later $5 billion, it is not just the newspaper industry that gets hurt. Journalism will be diminished in America with less investigative and enterprise reporting; indeed, less reporting of state houses, city halls, school boards, business and sports. Clearly a lot is at stake. It is time for newspapers to reconsider the ultimate costs and consequences of free news. Precision Media Group email: bosacks@aol.com phone: 518-329-7994 web: http://www.bosacks.com Blog - http://bosacksarchive.blogspot.com/ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of The Precision Media Group. Print, Publishing and Media Consultants  Contact - Robert M. Sacks 518-329-7994 PO Box 53, Copake NY 12516

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Beam To Restrict Ad Buys To Media Reaching 75% Legal Drinking Age

Beam To Restrict Ad Buys To Media Reaching 75% Legal Drinking Age
by Joe Mandese, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 8:30 AM ET

BEAM GLOBAL SPIRITS & WINE Inc., marketer of Jim Beam bourbon and other distilled spirits brands, Monday announced a voluntary standard that would restrict its print, TV and radio advertising to media whose audience composition is at least 75% legal drinking age consumers. The move raises the stakes among alcohol marketers who have adopted a voluntary industry standard of placing ads in media with 70% of their audience of legal drinking age. Beam also committed that on an "aggregate annual basis," its advertising would reach a minimum average of 85% of legal drinking age consumers.
In addition, the company announced it has voluntarily established the following policies:


* Not to market or advertise at "Spring Break" events nor utilize the term "Spring Break" in any marketing materials.
* To restrict brand images in video games.
* Not to market or sell any products in the "Flavored Malt Beverage" category.
* Not to advertise on outdoor locations within 500 feet of playgrounds.

Beam said it received a letter signed by 37 state attorneys general applauding its move.

Newspaper Sites Growing Faster Than Web Overall

Newspaper Sites Growing Faster Than Web Overall
by Erik Sass, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 6:00 AM ET

THE AUDIENCE FOR NEWSPAPER WEB sites is growing faster percentage-wise than the Internet audience at large, according to a study commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America and released on Monday.

The study, done by Nielsen//NetRatings, found a monthly average of 59 million people visiting Web sites in the first quarter of 2007--representing 5.3% growth over the same period of 2006. Meanwhile, the pool of total Internet users in the United States grew about 2.7%.
These numbers "validate the industry's investment in digital innovation, and the ongoing attraction consumers have to newspapers online," said NAA president and CEO John F. Sturm in a statement. "Newspaper publishers have aggressively transformed their business models, continually providing ground-breaking content to consumers with their expanding digital portfolios."

What's more, the NAA data paints an appealing portrait of newspaper's Web audiences from an advertiser perspective, with the average user having a higher household income than the norm, according to Nielsen//NetRatings: 11.9% of Web users who visited a newspaper Web site have an income of $150,000 or more, compared to 9.3% of the overall Web population. Users of newspaper Web sites show a greater propensity to shop online, with 88.1% making an online purchase in the last six months versus 78.9% on average. They are more likely to hold a professional or managerial-level job, with 41% falling into this category versus 32.7% of the general Web population. In terms of Web behavior patterns, 73% are daily Web users versus 57.8% overall, while 42% have viewed streaming video on the Web in the last 20 days, versus just 27.4% for the average Web user.

All that is good news for newspapers, according to Shawn Riegsecker, chief executive officer of Centro, a leading ad network for online newspaper sites: "As newspapers continue to invest in their digital properties and produce world-class content, I predict they will capture a much larger percentage of the overall online pie."

Although their online audiences are still growing at impressive rates, newspaper companies are having a hard time monetizing those audiences at levels high enough to offset losses from print advertising declines. Worse, the rate of revenue and income growth at many newspaper Web sites appears to have slowed in the first quarter. Internet revenue rose 21.6% at the New York Times Company, down from 39% average growth in 2006. At the Tribune Company, interactive revenues rose 17% to $60 million--down from a 29% growth increase in 2006. And the Washington Post saw revenues rise just 10%, compared to 34% for the first quarter of 2006, on a year-over-year basis.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993 BoSacks on the Web The BoSacks Blog Spot Click here to forward this email ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BoSacks Speaks Out: Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk Some of the concepts delivered herein are filled with BS, hot air, fluff, smoke and mirrors. Large publishers just don't get it. There are two things that a magazine must have to survive and prosper. A passionate and devoted readership, sometimes known as great content, and really honest and accurate accountability. That is it! As I read this article I see all this old style posturing by the publishers on record in this article. DUH! You are truly finished if you keep that up. Who are you kidding? Or are you just waiting for retirement and intend on ducking out the back door? This is now somehow like global warming, or a gazillion dollar deficit . . . fix it now, don't leave it to your grandchildren. It is time to stand up and deliver. Deliver the facts, not the bull. Have confidence in your titles and let the accountability drift to real levels, in real time, in a real world. Truth is I don't think you really have a choice. There is way too much competition in the advertising world today, and you will either join the solution revolution or be nothing more than a footnote of a past and forgotten problem.. "If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work" Ogden Nash (American Writer of humorous poetry who won a large following for his audacious verse. 1902-1971) Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk Exclusive: MediaVest Wields $900 Million to Land Issue-By-Issue Circ Promises By Nat Ives http://adage.com/mediaworks/article? article_id=116544 NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Kraft, Wal-Mart and Coca- Cola are among the marketers that are prepared to stop spending in magazines if they don't get issue-by- issue circulation guarantees. Media buyers long have been frustrated with many magazines' insistence on guaranteeing only average paid circulation -- instead of guaranteeing the paid circulation of specific issues in which ads actually appear. But now MediaVest USA has gathered support from heavyweight clients to make issue- specific guarantees a reality. "Let me be clear that I am a print champion," said Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment and activation at MediaVest. "However, we believe that all publishers should make this guarantee, and we will walk away from business for those who don't." MediaVest spent about $900 million in consumer magazines on behalf of its clients last year. New leverage The new power play reflects the growing demand for precision metrics in the media business, a drive fueled by an internet model that seems to promise instant accountability. It is also, though, part of a broader regime change in the industry, one that has delivered dominance to advertisers from media owners. Marketers now have too many options and have found too many ways to sell themselves, beyond traditional advertising, for publishers or broadcasters to keep setting the agenda. There's a reason commercial ratings on TV have arrived at last: Advertisers seem to finally have enough leverage to force the issue. "As somebody who's ultimately paying the bills, what I'm looking for is accountability and transparency," said Donna Campanella, executive director for global media at Avon, a MediaVest client. "We want to make sure that the impressions we were hoping to get for a particular issue have been delivered. Because what we advertise is coordinated with what's in our brochures, timeliness is important." "In this age when there are so many choices out there, particularly in the digital arena, traditional media needs to step up and really prove their value, good or bad," Ms. Campanella added. But change still doesn't come easily or instantly. Time Inc., the country's biggest magazine publisher, guarantees most advertisers an average paid circulation across the issues in which they buy space; if you buy into five issues, the company promises those five issues will achieve a certain average paid circulation. Pressure Anything else would only hike costs for everyone, said John Squires, senior exec VP at Time Inc., because publishers would pump up print runs to make sure not one issue falls even a percentage point shy of its rate base. "They want all guarantees and all protections at all times," he said of marketers and media buyers. "That just kind of forces a completely unrealistic expectation on our business. We do have to concentrate on some efficiencies." Publishers don't get any reward when magazines sell more copies than guaranteed, Mr. Squires noted. And swings of 50,000 copies in newsstand sales at magazines that consistently sell millions can't be the top challenge in marketing right now. "In these times, in this world, with the kind of competitive pressure that there is on publishers already and the intense pressure on rates, is this really a big issue?" he asked. Ms. Steinberg said advertisers need protection against tactics publishers can use to meet average guarantees. A few titles have made up for shortfalls early in the standard six-month reporting periods by drastically increasing their use of copies -- called "verified" by auditors -- that are distributed in hair salons, doctors' offices and so on. "Verified circulation was put forth with the notion that publishers would use and place these copies strategically and with transparency," she said. "However, we believe the proper use is not taking place, and the current use is to make up for rate base underdelivery from newsstand decline." A challenge from Hachette Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publisher of magazines such as Elle and Car and Driver, already has started selling its men's enthusiast titles against issue-specific guarantees and is considering doing the same across its portfolio next year. But if Jack Kliger, president-CEO, is going to meet the buyers' challenge, he has one of his own for them. "Issue-specific circulation-based pricing, to me, is an interim step to issue-specific audience-circulation guarantees," he said. That is to say, once the industry can better measure how many people see an issue, whether they borrow it from a friend or read a public- place copy, media buyers should drop this obsession with refining paid-circulation metrics. "It's like trying to make the kerosene lamp produce more light because that's what we're familiar with," Mr. Kliger said, "and don't trust this newfangled electricity thing." Original Source Link

Responses to all Articles and Bo-Rants are greatly encouraged and may be included in " BoSacks Readers Speak Out" "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of The Precision Media Group. Print, Publishing and Media Consultants Contact - Robert M. Sacks 518-329-7994 PO Box 53, Copake NY 12516

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A Beloved Mag's Painful Lessons

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993 BoSacks on the Web The BoSacks Blog Spot Click here to forward this email ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"We want only loyal workers who are grateful from the bottom of their hearts for the bread which we let them earn" Gustav Krupp A Beloved Mag's Painful Lessons What media companies can learn from the rise and fall of the much-beloved teen mag Sassy http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_2 0/b4034031.htm Not every magazine that rarely made a buck and died young gets a wet kiss of a book written about it, so tip your hat to Sassy (1988-96), the teen title whose story is recounted and memorialized in Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer's new How Sassy Changed My Life. During Sassy's brief, underfunded existence, it shot to a circulation of 800,000 pretty quickly, but didn't score ads as easily (and went through three owners). Sassy came and went while a subset of young America remade media via indie music labels and photocopied 'zines. Despite its glossy-mag garb, Sassy resonated with this culture, which gave the mag a similar secret-handshake signifier of status among its acolytes. There is something heartbreakingly familiar, something very "After School Special," in Sassy's saga. Smart young outsiders start something, do a bang-up job-and remain marginalized by the mainstream. Sassy taught a difficult lesson that remains valid: What's culturally significant can be lousy business, and often requires a pivot from a property's founding vision to be successful. For those who bonded most intensely with Sassy, this lesson was all the more painful because that bond was so deeply felt. PLAINLY GEARED TO OUTSIDER TEENS, Sassy was born in a pre-Web world, when there were no fancy interactive ways to find like-minded souls, back when such teens needed a campfire like Sassy's to encircle. These teens found each other with a giddy relief, and also shared a grievance against those not in their club. Both qualities were never far from Sassy's surface. These traits, and being simpatico with the indie movement, endeared it to twenty- and thirtysomething white urban hipsters, too. This ensured geek-chic status, but even some Sassy-ites wondered how hipster cred helped a magazine intended for a mass-market audience of teen girls. "I don't think it's the only factor, but one could argue that Sassy cooled itself to death," says Kim France, a former staff writer who now edits shopping magazine Lucky. There are media properties that mark cultural moments and ones that go on to become good businesses, but one cold reality about mass media is that what draws purists and early adopters is often not what equals boffo box office. Histories of other zeitgeisty magazines confirm this. Wired, which I admire, is today far removed from the utopianism and outré layouts of its early issues. Now, much of it is about business and tech toys. Today's Rolling Stone is light-years away from its overtly underground beginnings. (Its debut issue was packaged with a roach clip.) Sassy's turn toward more mainstream mores was clumsy and late, courtesy of an owner that in essence (foolishly) fired all veteran staffers. Sassy's founding editor, Jane Pratt, who now hosts a talk show on Sirius (SIRI ) Satellite Radio, tweaked her formula when she started young-women's title Jane. "I made a conscious decision to do a different kind of magazine-one that was an alternative to what was out there, but in such a way to be appealing to advertisers," she says today. A rare recent teen-mag hit, CosmoGirl!, hit it big by wrapping Sassy's geek- friendly vibe in a more mainstream sheen. Today, an autumnal chill has descended on teen magazines as readers flock to the Web. Two of Sassy's three main rivals, Teen and YM, are gone, as are Teen People and Elle Girl, two titles that followed Sassy. But nothing, then or since, looked or sounded like Sassy. (Perhaps they learned from Sassy's failure to expand a tightly proscribed niche.) Pratt recalls conversations with Sassy-ites in which everyone agreed it's better to be a fondly remembered, defunct magazine than "an O.K. magazine that sticks around for a long time." In the end, Sassy was a band, not a brand. A moment, not a media business. And what cultural moment is more keenly remembered than one that's irretrievably lost-one you can pine for forever, like a lovesick teen alone in the night? For Jon Fine's blog on media and advertising, go to www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia Original Source Link

Responses to all Articles and Bo-Rants are greatly encouraged and may be included in " BoSacks Readers Speak Out" "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of The Precision Media Group. Print, Publishing and Media Consultants Contact - Robert M. Sacks 518-329-7994 PO Box 53, Copake NY 12516

Publishing Links and News ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BoSacks Blog The New BoSacks Archives Publishing Executive Magazine The Official Site of Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni The New Single Copy Who Is BoSacks? PIB REVENUE & Pages

Contact Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ email: bosacks@aol.com phone: 518-329-7994 web: http://www.bosacks.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Circulation figures don't tell whole story

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993 BoSacks on the Web The BoSacks Blog Spot Click here to forward this email ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Luck is not chance - It's Toil - Fortune's expensive smile Is earned" Emily Dickinson (American Poet who has been called the New England mystic, 1830-1886) Circulation figures don't tell whole story by Earl Maucker Editor http://www.sun- sentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/sfl- emcol06may06,0,1139889,print.column Back in the 1960s when I was a paperboy for the Alton Telegraph, I used to groan each time I received a new subscription order. One more paper to deliver, I thought, more weight in the bag, more time on the route -- less time for play. Ah, for the good old days of circulation growth. Fast forward to 2007 and once again we're reminded in stories this week that circulation of newspapers across the U.S. is in decline. Pretty dismal stuff, it would seem. But wait. Let's take a deeper look at the facts before we start writing off the future of newspapers. Yes, circulation figures are dropping in most regions of the United States. That's hardly surprising in today's environment, with so much media fragmentation, so many ways to get news and information. In reality, some of the circulation declines are deliberate, as publishers seek value from papers they do distribute. More and more newspaper companies are limiting or eliminating entirely the newspapers they give away for free or at a major discount because, generally, those newspapers are not well read. But beyond the number of newspapers in the market, experts and analysts in the business say newspaper advertisers care more about readership, which measures whether people are actually reading the paper instead of tossing it into the recycle bin without so much as a glance. Our focus here at the Sun-Sentinel has been on home delivery or single copy sales, areas where we believe there is substantial value. The agency that monitors circulation of newspapers is the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which, in my opinion, is still back in the 1960s in the way they count and report numbers. Sure, they break it down even to the zip code level. They calculate circulation in the primary region and secondary regions of the newspaper's market, individually paid subscriptions, bulk sales, third-party sales and a host of other metrics including total readers of the daily newspaper. But what they don't report is the total audience a media company like the Sun-Sentinel reaches through its various publications and electronic channels. Even with fewer copies on the street, our readership is up from what it was two years ago. The published audits do not take into account the impact of the Internet or subsidiary publications. We, like most major newspaper companies, are major players in this relatively new, still-evolving medium. For us, it's Sun-Sentinel.com Which, by the way, has grown in audience traffic every year it's been in operation. "We're seeing good audience growth online. So far this year, our Sun-Sentinel.com page views -- one way we measure our audience -- are up more than 12 percent over the same time in 2006," said Kathy Skipper, vice president & general manager for Sun- Sentinel Interactive. "We believe several things are contributing to this growth -- regular news updates, more video and more databases that are focused on helping consumers. Combined with millions of page views per month on our Internet site and the distribution of our main newspaper, plus niche products like the Jewish Journal, City & Shore magazine, City Link, Teen Link and other products, our total audience reach has grown tremendously over the past few years. "We recognize that in order to reach our audience effectively we must serve our customers on multiple platforms," said our General Manager Howard Greenberg. "Through Forum Publishing we have the largest family of weekly community publications in South Florida as well as the largest Spanish language audience in the Broward-Palm Beach market through el Sentinel, our Spanish language weekly." No one is denying that newspapers are dealing with enormous challenges in today's world of fragmented media and the influence of the Internet. But newspapers and the journalists that work on them have a healthy future ahead, as we transform our business to the new world of multiple media. The good news is that the appetite for news has never been more robust. We intend to serve our customers the way they like it. Original Source Link

Responses to all Articles and Bo-Rants are greatly encouraged and may be included in " BoSacks Readers Speak Out" "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of The Precision Media Group. Print, Publishing and Media Consultants Contact - Robert M. Sacks 518-329-7994 PO Box 53, Copake NY 12516

Publishing Links and News ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BoSacks Blog The New BoSacks Archives Publishing Executive Magazine The Official Site of Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni The New Single Copy Who Is BoSacks? PIB REVENUE & Pages

Contact Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ email: bosacks@aol.com phone: 518-329-7994 web: http://www.bosacks.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk

Marketers to Mags: Give Guarantees or We'll Walk
Exclusive: MediaVest Wields $900 Million to Land Issue-By-Issue Circ Promises
By Nat Ives
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=116544

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Kraft, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola are among the marketers that are prepared to stop spending in magazines if they don't get issue-by-issue circulation guarantees.
Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment and activation at MediaVest, insists that magazines should make issue-by-issue circulation guarantees to marketers.

Media buyers long have been frustrated with many magazines' insistence on guaranteeing only average paid circulation -- instead of guaranteeing the paid circulation of specific issues in which ads actually appear. But now MediaVest USA has gathered support from heavyweight clients to make issue-specific guarantees a reality.

"Let me be clear that I am a print champion," said Robin Steinberg, senior VP-director of print investment and activation at MediaVest. "However, we believe that all publishers should make this guarantee, and we will walk away from business for those who don't." MediaVest spent about $900 million in consumer magazines on behalf of its clients last year.

New leverage
The new power play reflects the growing demand for precision metrics in the media business, a drive fueled by an internet model that seems to promise instant accountability. It is also, though, part of a broader regime change in the industry, one that has delivered dominance to advertisers from media owners. Marketers now have too many options and have found too many ways to sell themselves, beyond traditional advertising, for publishers or broadcasters to keep setting the agenda. There's a reason commercial ratings on TV have arrived at last: Advertisers seem to finally have enough leverage to force the issue.

"As somebody who's ultimately paying the bills, what I'm looking for is accountability and transparency," said Donna Campanella, executive director for global media at Avon, a MediaVest client. "We want to make sure that the impressions we were hoping to get for a particular issue have been delivered. Because what we advertise is coordinated with what's in our brochures, timeliness is important."

"In this age when there are so many choices out there, particularly in the digital arena, traditional media needs to step up and really prove their value, good or bad," Ms. Campanella added.

But change still doesn't come easily or instantly. Time Inc., the country's biggest magazine publisher, guarantees most advertisers an average paid circulation across the issues in which they buy space; if you buy into five issues, the company promises those five issues will achieve a certain average paid circulation.

Pressure
Anything else would only hike costs for everyone, said John Squires, senior exec VP at Time Inc., because publishers would pump up print runs to make sure not one issue falls even a percentage point shy of its rate base. "They want all guarantees and all protections at all times," he said of marketers and media buyers. "That just kind of forces a completely unrealistic expectation on our business. We do have to concentrate on some efficiencies."

Publishers don't get any reward when magazines sell more copies than guaranteed, Mr. Squires noted. And swings of 50,000 copies in newsstand sales at magazines that consistently sell millions can't be the top challenge in marketing right now. "In these times, in this world, with the kind of competitive pressure that there is on publishers already and the intense pressure on rates, is this really a big issue?" he asked.

Ms. Steinberg said advertisers need protection against tactics publishers can use to meet average guarantees. A few titles have made up for shortfalls early in the standard six-month reporting periods by drastically increasing their use of copies -- called "verified" by auditors -- that are distributed in hair salons, doctors' offices and so on. "Verified circulation was put forth with the notion that publishers would use and place these copies strategically and with transparency," she said. "However, we believe the proper use is not taking place, and the current use is to make up for rate base underdelivery from newsstand decline."

A challenge from Hachette
Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publisher of magazines such as Elle and Car and Driver, already has started selling its men's enthusiast titles against issue-specific guarantees and is considering doing the same across its portfolio next year. But if Jack Kliger, president-CEO, is going to meet the buyers' challenge, he has one of his own for them.

"Issue-specific circulation-based pricing, to me, is an interim step to issue-specific audience-circulation guarantees," he said. That is to say, once the industry can better measure how many people see an issue, whether they borrow it from a friend or read a public-place copy, media buyers should drop this obsession with refining paid-circulation metrics. "It's like trying to make the kerosene lamp produce more light because that's what we're familiar with," Mr. Kliger said, "and don't trust this newfangled electricity thing."

Circulation figures don't tell whole story

Circulation figures don't tell whole story
Earl Maucker
Editor
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/sfl-emcol06may06,0,1139889,print.column

Back in the 1960s when I was a paperboy for the Alton Telegraph, I used to groan each time I received a new subscription order. One more paper to deliver, I thought, more weight in the bag, more time on the route -- less time for play.

Ah, for the good old days of circulation growth.

Fast forward to 2007 and once again we're reminded in stories this week that circulation of newspapers across the U.S. is in decline.

Pretty dismal stuff, it would seem.

But wait. Let's take a deeper look at the facts before we start writing off the future of newspapers.

Yes, circulation figures are dropping in most regions of the United States. That's hardly surprising in today's environment, with so much media fragmentation, so many ways to get news and information.

In reality, some of the circulation declines are deliberate, as publishers seek value from papers they do distribute.

More and more newspaper companies are limiting or eliminating entirely the newspapers they give away for free or at a major discount because, generally, those newspapers are not well read.

But beyond the number of newspapers in the market, experts and analysts in the business say newspaper advertisers care more about readership, which measures whether people are actually reading the paper instead of tossing it into the recycle bin without so much as a glance.

Our focus here at the Sun-Sentinel has been on home delivery or single copy sales, areas where we believe there is substantial value.

The agency that monitors circulation of newspapers is the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which, in my opinion, is still back in the 1960s in the way they count and report numbers.

Sure, they break it down even to the zip code level. They calculate circulation in the primary region and secondary regions of the newspaper's market, individually paid subscriptions, bulk sales, third-party sales and a host of other metrics including total readers of the daily newspaper.

But what they don't report is the total audience a media company like the Sun-Sentinel reaches through its various publications and electronic channels.

Even with fewer copies on the street, our readership is up from what it was two years ago.

The published audits do not take into account the impact of the Internet or subsidiary publications.

We, like most major newspaper companies, are major players in this relatively new, still-evolving medium.

For us, it's Sun-Sentinel.com

Which, by the way, has grown in audience traffic every year it's been in operation.

"We're seeing good audience growth online. So far this year, our Sun-Sentinel.com page views -- one way we measure our audience -- are up more than 12 percent over the same time in 2006," said Kathy Skipper, vice president & general manager for Sun-Sentinel Interactive. "We believe several things are contributing to this growth -- regular news updates, more video and more databases that are focused on helping consumers.

Combined with millions of page views per month on our Internet site and the distribution of our main newspaper, plus niche products like the Jewish Journal, City & Shore magazine, City Link, Teen Link and other products, our total audience reach has grown tremendously over the past few years.

"We recognize that in order to reach our audience effectively we must serve our customers on multiple platforms," said our General Manager Howard Greenberg. "Through Forum Publishing we have the largest family of weekly community publications in South Florida as well as the largest Spanish language audience in the Broward-Palm Beach market through el Sentinel, our Spanish language weekly."

No one is denying that newspapers are dealing with enormous challenges in today's world of fragmented media and the influence of the Internet.

But newspapers and the journalists that work on them have a healthy future ahead, as we transform our business to the new world of multiple media.

The good news is that the appetite for news has never been more robust.

We intend to serve our customers the way they like it.

Publishers Hear Digital Fingerprinting Pitch

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence: Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993 BoSacks on the Web The BoSacks Blog Spot Click here to forward this email ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled." Andrew Carnegie (Scottish born American Industrialist and Philanthropist. 1835-1919) Publishers Hear Digital Fingerprinting Pitch by Karlene Lukovitz http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm? fuseaction=Articles.san&s=59820&Nid=30069&p=204 904 WATCHING GOOGLE AND VIACOM DUKE it out in court is interesting, but in the real world, publishers and other site owners are more interested in finding a practical way to monitor who's using their content and either get some reimbursement or get it off the Web. As the business world read about Google/YouTube filing for a dismissal of Viacom's $1 billion copyright infringement suit earlier this week, a group of publishing executives gathered at a Magazine Publishers of America "Meet the Innovators" session to hear a pitch for one potential answer. Attributor Corp., a privately held Redwood City, CA company started by Silicon Valley executives, is testing technology that scans and captures digital "fingerprints"--or identifying characteristics--of text, images and audiovisual content and then continuously scans its index of the Web to pick up matches. The company claims that the system can spot content reuse within just about any Web area/format, including RSS feeds, self-published sites, social networks, advertising networks, search engines and aggregators, based on a few text sentences, bits of an image, or seconds of an audio/video clip. Attributor doesn't claim to know exactly what is and is not "fair use" under the evolving legal precedents surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; rather, the system employs a site owner's own specified criteria to generate automatic responses to identified instances of reuse, explained CEO Jim Brock, a former Yahoo copyright counsel who co- founded Attributor in 2005 with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Pitkow. Depending on the scenario (the percentage of content used, whether it's being used for commercial purposes, etc.), a content reuser might, for instance, receive a request to remove content, or a proposal to allow continuing reuse of the content in return for giving the originator a portion of advertising revenue or licensing fees. A single console provides the site owner with ongoing monitoring of each issue's status until there is some kind of resolution. Site owners can also employ a searchable public registry that allows anyone wishing to republish content to identify the owner and seek a licensing agreement. In short, Attributor may present a more streamlined and wide-ranging solution than existing content monitoring systems like Indigo Stream Technologies' Copyscape, which relies on Google's search engine to seek out unauthorized uses. Attributor is now in beta with several "large, international publishers," and is taking requests to generate free trial reports for interested publishers while the development phase continues, Brock said. Between 40 and 45 million Web pages per day are being added to the system through RSS feeds and periodic content scanning/conversions, he added. In December, the company announced that it had received $10 million in funding to date from investors including Sigma Partners, Draper Richards LP, First Round Capital, Amicus and Selby Venture Partners. Where does Brock think digital fair use definitions are headed? "At this point, nobody can say that a certain percentage of an article equates or does not equate to fair use," he says. "It's still subjective under the law. But once we have the systems in place for transparency, we believe those standards will evolve." Meanwhile, he says, "if from a business standpoint, it's not fair use by your standards, you can address that, negotiate, respond as you see fit." For example, if no attribution is provided, a significant portion of a given piece of content is being used, and it's being used for commercial purposes, "then you've got three indicators that might set off a 'ding, ding, ding,'" Brock notes. Original Source Link

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