A couple of weeks ago, the St. Petersburg aka Tampa Bay Times announced it was cutting back to just two days a week in print. My take here.
Having looked at last Thursday's Dallas Morning News, I can't understand why it isn't doing the same.
First, the paper was less than 30 pages. I remember it wasn't too awfully long ago that Mondays crashed the sub-30 barrier. Thursday isn't a huge day, but it used to be decent, in part because some stores wanted to get a jump on weekend sales.
Second, I do understand that that includes not having sports, because there is no sports to cover. That said, that's a good reason why more regional dailies should be scrapping some print days, anyway. (Not to mention that sports pages long had near-zero advertising on them.)
OK, even without sports pages as a lead anchor on the ad percentage, and counting obits as part of the adhole, as I long have done with any paper from a decent semiweekly up that I know charges more than a nominal rate on obits? It was still less than 3 1/2 pages of adhole. About 13 percent.
You can't do that.
Plus, Belo doesn't have wiggle room. Its digital marketing services may make more than the Snooze, but remember, the Snooze and affiliated print products in the Metroplex are all the Belo owns, other than its digital marketing, which for a variety of reasons, investors and others don't totally like.
TINA, per Thatcher.
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