Well, I suppose it was inevitable- the price of the daily Blade has risen from $.50 to $.75 The Sunday Blade rose from $1.50 to $1.75. Justification? Probably because The Blade has been losing money for years plus escalated fuel cost for the delivery vans.
Any other theories?
Comments ... #
Price increase long overdue.
There isn't much of anything that cost just 50 cents anymore.
Diesel fuel is more expensive, plus the cost of paper and ink (a petroleum based product) keeps rising.
posted by WalterAnthony on Jul 15, 2008 at 05:27:01 am #
I thought it was $2 on Sunday. I think wholesale daily is $0.63 to stores. I can double check.
But nevertheless, jacking prices to the tune of 50% in a recessing economy is the equivalent of testing out their middle finger sign language on your cataracts.
I suspect they're losing advertising revenue to the freebie papers. That's where the real coin is. It takes a lot of energy/manpower collecting 3 quarters daily. Not so much collecting a 6 figure check from Lion Store.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer still costs 50 cents as of yesterday.
From a search result on "BLADE, TOLEDO" at the Audit Bureau of Circulations :
Circulation averages for the six months ended: 3/31/2008
Publication Name Frequency Circulation Type Total Circulation* Filing Status BLADE, TOLEDO (LUCAS CO.) SAT M DLY 116,342 BLADE, TOLEDO (LUCAS CO.) AVG M (M-F) DLY 119,901 BLADE, TOLEDO (LUCAS CO.) SUN DLY 147,141 * Total Circulation = Total Average Paid Circulation
From a May 3, 2005 posting :Blade daily circulation numbers from past years ...The numbers are from the Audit Bureau of Circulations for reporting periods ending September 30 for each year listed.
Toledo Blade average daily circulation:
1996 - 147,365
1997 - 145,800
1998 - 146,138
1999 - 144,887
2000 - 137,792
2001 - 140,406
2002 - 140,628
2003 - 139,520
2004 - 139,346 (Blade report)
Don't have 2005 and 2006 numbers.
For the six month period ending September 30, 2007, the average daily circulation number for the Toledo Blade was 120,125. That's a drop of 19,000 in only three years after a decline of 8,000 in eight years.
May 30, 2007 Blade story :
Members of the Toledo Newspaper Guild voted by a nearly 2-1 ratio yesterday to ratify a new contract with The Blade. The Guild was the last of the newspaper's eight unions to vote on a contract. Six other unions ratified new agreements last week, and a seventh approved a new pact last summer. The ratification ends more than a year of negotiations and a nine-month lockout of 215 of the newspaper's craft employees. Union leaders said it also brings an end to their call for a newspaper boycott by readers and advertisers.
Did the lockout and boycott cause the big drop in circulation?
The Sunday Toledo Blade circulation number for the six-month period ending March 31, 2008 is 147,141.From a December 31, 1991 New York Times article titled Toledo Blade To Add Parade :
The Toledo (Ohio) Blade, with a Sunday circulation of 215,490 ...
I read it when I can find a free copy, I haven't purchased one in years, since my cat died.
posted by CharlieA-Z on Jul 15, 2008 at 03:30:16 pm #
The Blade gets more mangled in my paper box by the week and thinner and now its going to cost more? Ever since they screwed the kids that used to deliver the paper I haven't been much of a fan of The Blade. They used to deliver to the home of the delivery kids, now you have to have a car and go pick them up. The stories are old, you can get just about all the info online or from TV before you get the paper the next day. There is only 2 things that make it worth buying, the coupons from Sundays paper and the Obituaries. The comic section comes in a close 3rd but I can find them online.
posted by Linecrosser on Jul 15, 2008 at 04:27:14 pm #
posted by Linecrosser on Jul 15, 2008 at 04:28:28 pm #
I think the MSM totally ignored the warning of Alvin Toffler when he wrote in The Third Wave WAY back in 1979 that as communications technologies improve the control of information dissemination by the MSM will come to an end, a process he called demassification of the media.
Well, guess what: Toffler's prophecy has become 2006 reality. With 70+ channel analog cable TV systems, 120+ channel digital cable TV systems, 200+ channel small dish satellite systems, TV program time-shift devices such as VCR's and DVR's, DVD players, and the public Internet (now increasingly on high-speed broadband access), no wonder why the MSM can't figure out why their marketshare is rapidly falling.
Comparatively, I'd have to say buying the National Enquirer would be more satisfying!
posted by GraphicsGuy on Jul 15, 2008 at 04:56:51 pm #
Circulation probably matters less than revenue. I believe advertisers were pulling when The Blade was thumb wrestling the union. Who knows? They might have saw no change in sales during that and decided never to go back.
Allegedly classified ads are down nationally and the absence of disposable income with mortgage and gas prices going up and real income declining, what's the point of advertisers trying hard for less dollars?
I think it's an act of desperation to raise the price to bring revenues up. Newspapers used to be recession-proof, but not sure it's the case anymore. Especially when there's thousands of ways to get the news and more on the internet instead of the newspaper monopoly, the television oligopoly, and the radio cacophony.
But here's another theory: well-trained boring journalists who stamp out parts
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/01/why-newspapers-suck-a-theory.html
"No American newspaper today would hire Mencken, because the managers would be scared to death of him. If Mencken were with us today, he'd be a blogger. He'd have to be."
Bierce, too.
"Allegedly classified ads are down nationally ..."
March 2008 story : Newspaper industry experiences worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years :
National print advertising revenue dropped 6.7% to $7 billion last year [2007]. Retail slipped 5% to $21 billion. Classified plunged 16.5% to $14.1 billion.
That's a decent one-year alleged drop for classified revenue. But it's not Craigslist's fault.
August 2007 Globe and Mail story titled The Hippie Gets a Job :[Craigslist's] unwillingness to charge for most of its listings is infuriating for newspaper publishers who see classifieds moving on-line and recognize that as long as Craigslist is giving away the service for free, they will have a hard time charging for it.By the numbers
- 450: The number of cities worldwide for which Craigslist offers local classifieds and forums.
- 8 billion: The number of page views Craigslist generates each month.
- 10 million: The number of new images that are uploaded to Craigslist each month.
- 25 million: The number of people who use Craigslist each month.
- 20 million: The number of classified ads that Craigslist users self-publish each month.
- 1 million: The number of job listings the site receives each month.
- $25: The amount in U.S. dollars that Craigslist charges for jobs ads for New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, Seattle and San Diego. It charges $75 in San Francisco.
- 24: The number of Craigslist employees.
Old media meets new realities :The rise of the Internet represents the biggest crisis in the history of the print news industry - worse than Walter Cronkite, worse than CNN, worse even than the extinction of the evening paper in the '70s and '80s. Even as metro dailies were losing audience share to the 6 o'clock news, big-city papers were able to ratchet up advertising rates because by that point most of them, including the AJC, were hometown monopolies. They continued to enjoy enviable profit margins of around 20 percent. But that was before Craigslist and Monster.com helped knock the floor out from under traditional classified advertising, and news websites and bloggers began to steal more print readers than ever before.
Here are two more cost-cutting ideas for newspapers that come from two recent stories :
- June 30, 2008 : 'Plain Dealer' Cuts 32 Pages Per Week, Drops Four Sections
- July 1, 2008 : Another Illinois Paper Cuts Monday Editions
Maybe that's why the Plain Dealer still only costs 50 cents. Less of a paper. It's like Andy Capp Fries, which have cost 99 cents forever, but, of course, a bag contains less fries today.
July 15, 2008 story : Wall Street Journal newsstand price goes from $1.50 to $2 on July 28
After the paper increased its cover price from $1 to $1.50 last year, average single copy sales fell by about 8 percent.
© 2003-2008 Toledo Talk
current date: 08-Sep-2008 8:05 A.M.
no, I pretty much agree with that. just one more thing that's gonna cost more money to do and never get any cheaper. too bad they can't just move everybody over to the online copy and save a lot MORE money. 'course, that puts MORE people out of work, so they can't afford to buy the paper........
posted by nana on Jul 14, 2008 at 10:24:34 pm #