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In the long run,
less printed newspapers, less competitors for ad money, more for Google AdSense
In this period I would like to know how many Internet businesses will collaps due to the lack of revenues.
Global crisis is bad for all.
This long run means 4 or 5 years. Minimum.
Maybe in boom times.
Even the not so good companies survive.
But not in times like this.
They are not going away. They are simply shedding their debt so they can reorganize.
[edited by: OnlyToday at 2:24 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2008]
I think in the long run, Google AdWords/AdSense will set the prices. No one will accept anymore far higher prices, only because "Famouse newspaper name".
For many of this magazines, this will be like a smart pricing shock.
In my local area, there is an online version of a newspaper.
Sure, they can not make real money with it.
A single 468x60 top right, content most time not related to the article, because the site is not designed to help the AdSense bot to recognice the important parts.
It's like they see the online version as some sort of hobby.
I even offered them my help "That's to expensive, that makes AdSense not in years".
Okay, I asked them simple what's about 1 month revenues of my sites with AdSense.
Will the problems that newspapers are experiencing benefit rank-and-file AdSense publishers? In some cases, yes, but on the whole, that seems doubtful. Advertisers, ad agencies, and other professional media buyers who traditionally have spent money on newspaper audiences aren't going to throw money willingly at the traditional AdSense "potluck audience." They're going to demand the kind of accountability that they've traditionally enjoyed in the print and broadcast worlds. If anything, the influx of big advertising money into the online is likely to increase the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" by setting higher standards for publishers' professionalism and performance.
Whatever they filed, it isn't good news for the Tribune Co., its shareholders, or its employees. Will it have a direct impact on the average AdSense publisher? I suspect not.
The economic slowdown is just the last straw for some, this has been happening all along. Contextual advertising is still in its infancy.
[edited by: OnlyToday at 4:13 am (utc) on Dec. 10, 2008]
You're correct, those factors contributed to the decline, but the main reason the company is going down is because the man who took it over last year, Sam Zell, caused the company to take on Billions of dollars in debt. It's the crushing debt they were carrying that made the company unable to compete effectively.
There's an article about Sam Zell from last year in the New Yorker Magazine [newyorker.com].
Zell chose to overlook the fact that his transaction, unlike Murdoch’s, was highly leveraged; when the deal is done, Tribune will have thirteen billion dollars of debt— the most encumbered balance sheet in the newspaper industry.
If it weren't for that debt, they could probably limp along just like all the other papers. But remember, the Tribune company isn't just a newspaper, it's also 23 televison stations and other businesses apart from the two newspapers. This takeover was highly leveraged and that's what stressed the company and made it unable to compete, sinking the entire media group, not just the newspapers.
From Reuters [reuters.com]
Tribune Co, which owns eight major daily newspapers and several television stations, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after collapsing under a heavy debt load just a year after real estate mogul Sam Zell took it private...Tribune's bankruptcy filing is the latest chapter in the unraveling of the leveraged buyout boom...
You're correct, those factors contributed to the decline, but the main reason the company is going down is because the man who took it over last year, Sam Zell, caused the company to take on Billions of dollars in debt.
That's true, and before that a merger with the LA Times Mirror resulted in a huge tax burden that Trib management did not see coming.
One has to wonder what made Zell, a real estate billionaire, think he could succeed where so many others have failed. It doesn't make sense.
The star assets are, of course, The Cubs and Wrigley Field. Both are on the block.
"No one has been 'caught up in this great upheaval.' Caught up? That makes it sound like a tornado. This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move."
[boingboing.net...]
