This week’s bad news from Richmond
June 15, 2007 at 1:56 pm by Wayne GarciaDepressing in its sameness, the latest monthly statement from Media General, which owns the Tampa Tribune, WFLA TV and TBO.com is another bummer for the daily newspaper.
The company’s publishing division revenues are off nearly 13 percent from a year ago, mostly due to dismal performances (financially, that is) in Tampa. Media General’s news release today says:
“The economic downturn in Florida continues to hamper our Tampa operations. This situation is affecting the performance of all three divisions as a result of lower results at The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV, and TBO.com,” said Marshall N. Morton, president and chief executive officer. “We have implemented a performance improvement plan in Tampa to better align expenses with the current revenue environment, as previously announced, and we are assessing other opportunities.
(”Assessing other opportunities” translates to “looking for even more ways to cut costs” in the aftermath of 70 layoffs earlier this year.) The release continues:
“Publishing Division results in May reflected continued significant weakness in Classified advertising. We were very disappointed to see the Retail category decline, a reflection of major retailers holding back on spending in virtually every market. We saw a few bright spots in May, including increases in real estate Classified advertising in Richmond, a market that has not yet been severely affected by the national housing downturn. In addition, National revenues increased at The Richmond Times- Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal and in our community newspaper group; however, these increases were offset by a decline at The Tampa Tribune,” said Mr. Morton.
“To mitigate the effect of the advertising downturn, in addition to Tampa’s performance improvement plan, we have frozen hiring on most open positions, except sales jobs, which we are accelerating our efforts to fill. We are reducing discretionary spending wherever possible and have asked all of our properties to accelerate new product introductions and intensify their focus on new revenue development,” said Mr. Morton.
How bad is the Trib dragging down the Richmond-based public company? Consider this: Classified ads are off 38 percent at the Tribune vs. 3-3.5 percent at MG’s other newspapers.
And finally, for those worrying about how this will impact the quality of the newspaper, fear not, for MG tells us:
All Media General newspapers have implemented content enhancement programs to drive readership.
