Thursday, May 07, 2020

Newspapers, coronavirus, and the dropoff in special ROP,
non-ROP and ancillary ad-like revenue

What I am talking about, for the layperson, and for newspaper folks who might "aha" if I used different words, at least on the second half of the second line?

First,  for the layperson, ROP is "display ads." Or what somebody might even call "picture ads" at a non-daily newspaper if, were there office open right now, and you were to say "I want to buy an ad" and the person helping you might respond, "Picture ad or word ad?"

OK, non-ROP is those "word ads."

Classifieds, in other words.

And ROP is picture ads.

Special ROP is special sections inside a newspaper.

Everybody who knows something about newspapers, including the intelligent layperson, knows something about the ROP dropoff. Let's tackle the rest, starting with special ROP.

Right now, spring/summer travel, bridal and in a month, graduations would be among these special sections.

Travel? When it's unclear what will reopen, and things like musical and sports events, in some cases, or entertainment sites like Disneyland, people are saying "not until fall," you simply can't sell ads to a section like that.

Bridal? Special sections there face similar problems. You can't sell ads about honeymoon destinations.

Graduations? Small high schools will do the best they can, so non-daily papers won't hurt so much. But larger daily papers, if they have had grads specials in the past? Not right now.

Now, to classifieds.

They're off for several reasons.

One is that, to the degree newspapers still have a help wanted section, there's not a lot of people hiring right now. This is hitting all papers alike, from big regional dailies down to community weeklies.

Another is hitting from small community dailies on down.

Nobody's holding garage sales right now, in what should be prime season in the southern tier of the U.S. And, at small dailies and nondailies, at this time of the year, ordinarily that might make up a fair chunk of the classys.

There are a few other areas that have also been hit on the classys page, but that's the biggest I can think of.

The ancillary?

Obits, and similar.

Obits are hurting to a degree because public burials aren't happening right now. Because of that, especially at larger papers that charge by the word or by the column inch? I'm venturing a 10 percent drop there. Obits are shortening and some are moving more toward extended death notices.

On the other side of the spectrum, many non-dailies still don't charge for births, engagements and weddings. But some do. Certainly, small dailies do, and so do mid-sized ones. (I'm surprised large dailies haven't started this. Surely there's a few Buffett cigar butts there.)

Kids are still being born. (That may be different nine months from now, of course.)

But, weddings are on hold right now, because ... where do you have them? where is the honeymoon going to be? Etc.

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