Newspapers – Time To Show & Tell?

Frank Hall, who runs his own independent media consultancy, FOB Consulting Ltd, looks at whether the national newspaper industry should introduce a greater clarity into its market figures…

At last week’s MediaTel seminar on the Future of National Newspapers, each of the panellists made a strong case for the sound, long-term future of our daily and Sunday newspapers. Whilst they all accepted that the next couple of years would see difficult trading conditions, most felt that the over-riding sense of ‘doom and gloom’ in much of the current media commentary was unfounded.

Personally, I tend to agree.

However, perception plays a huge role in any market and the media market is no exception. Press buyers could perhaps be forgiven for viewing the seemingly inexorable growth of online spending as a necrotising virus, gobbling up the readers and advertising budgets that are the lifeblood of traditional media. And yet so much of last week’s debate centred on the significant investment that so many of our leading print brands have and are making in online formats.

If there is a genuine battlefield between new media and old it seems to me that it is currently shrouded in an awful lot of smoke and confusion. Figures for online spend (and its level of annual growth) seem to vary considerably dependent upon the source and what is or is not included within the figures. At the same time we seem to be looking at declining revenue figures for print display in national press, which many expect to become an ongoing scenario. In this context I believe the national press could lift some of the haze and do itself a lot of good in the process.

Unlike most other traditional media, print has always been somewhat coy in putting its real advertising revenue data in the public domain. Sure, we get AA figures six months after the event, but by then market perceptions have already become set and the market itself has moved on accordingly. In any case the current reporting formats don’t show how that revenue is split between the traditional print formats and the newer online or mobile platforms, or even if the latter is included at all. At a time when so many commentators and competitors are seemingly eager to talk down the national press’s fortunes introducing greater clarity into the market figures can only be a benefit.

It’s quite likely that national press revenues from their online formats are comparatively small at present – exactly how best to monetise these new formats still seems to be open to debate, just as it is for many other online businesses. But publishers wouldn’t have invested so much time and money without expecting a return, and the unique monthly user figures for several titles are already quite impressive. Allowing advertisers and agencies to see in hard terms and on a monthly or quarterly basis the growing value of newspapers’ brand extensions is also a great way of increasing the price it might command. Perhaps it is time for the national newspapers to do what they have always done best – show and tell!