MEDIA & MARKETING:As the printing presses crank up for the new year, the industry faces multiple challenges
AFTER SUSTAINING a battering that fell short of bloodshed in 2011, the local newspaper sector will be hoping that 2012 brings a similar survival rate.
But while local newspaper groups will be relieved that to date there has been no repeat of the distribution-hitting and circulation-shrinking big freeze of winter 2010-2011, there are still multiple cold fronts for the sector to negotiate as the printing presses crank up for the new year.
Johnny O’Hanlon, director of the Regional Newspapers and Printers Association of Ireland, says its members are budgeting for an expected 5-10 per cent decline in advertising revenues.
“Obviously it’s going to be another challenging year, no doubt about it,” he says. “But one of the upsides is that our members generally have much leaner operations now, which augurs well for the bottom line.”
Some titles and groups were “late to the fray” on cost-cutting, however, meaning there will be more cutbacks to come in 2012. Having exhausted the low-hanging fruit, “more fundamental issues” may be up for the chop – for example, titles that have not yet outsourced their distribution will consider such a move.
Closures can’t be ruled out, of course, but there are some entries in the positives column to balance the negatives. Any drop-off in circulation during the July-December 2011 period as a result of wider trends in the newspaper market should be partially offset by the absence of the weather-related chaos endured in the 2010 comparison period.
Aided by long retention rates in the home for weekly editions, readership trends at local papers are also less horrifying than they are for the national press.
Mediaforce Ireland sales director Shane Treanor says the last set of Joint National Readership Survey figures showed a 2.9 per cent fall in readership of the 49 regional titles that his company represents to advertising agencies and major advertisers.
This compares to a 10.3 per cent decline in morning newspaper readership.
Major sporting events are also illuminating the commercial horizon, according to Treanor, who says Mediaforce is negotiating a series of corporate sponsorship deals that will tie into local press profiles of Irish Olympic athletes.
ESB Electric Ireland is the main sponsor of Team Ireland, but there’s also a plethora of global brands sponsoring the games “that have to blow their horns in the Republic as well”, he notes.
And the Irish athletes on track to compete in London 2012 all have to come from somewhere.
"Katie Taylor, for example, is from Wicklow, so her local paper is the Bray People. But to be honest, some of the people we're looking at are people who don't have a profile – the people who are not professional athletes but might have a small grant from the sports council; the people who get up at 6am in the morning to train."
Similar corporate tie-ins are in the pipeline for Euro 2012, with local revenue opportunities helped by the fact that the Irish football team is now less reliant on the “granny” rule when it comes to selecting players than it was in the Jack Charlton era.
Such commercially minded content is more likely than ever to be displayed on tabloid pages. The Munster Express,the Leinster Leaderand the Roscommon Heraldall made the shift from broadsheet to compact last year, and Treanor foresees more titles following suit in 2012.
This may prompt advertisers to re-think traditional ad formats in favour of more eye-catching shapes. “Advertisers are beginning to realise you don’t have to take a 25 by 4 ad anymore,” he says. “One of the notions we’re trying to dispel is that local newspapers are still in the dark ages. We’re always open for business.”
On his exit interview last June, Anthony Dinan, retiring managing director of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, observed that local and regional titles would find it easier to sell printed copies than national newspapers in the era of the iPhone and iPad. “Easier” is not the same as “easy” however, and it’s a question of “watch this digital space” in 2012.
One company to keep an eye on is the UK media group Johnston Press, which last year appointed a digital expert, Ashley Highfield, as chief executive.
Highfield, a veteran of Microsoft UK and a former director of new media and technology at the BBC, is now the ultimate overseer of 12 titles in the Republic, including the Limerick Leaderand the Kilkenny People.
O’Hanlon certainly does not think the regional press can afford to ignore the digital conundrum. “Some of our titles have as many eyeballs on apps as they do print readers,” he says. Publishers are clearly keen to find a way to make money from it.
Pessimistic views abound. At a regional newspaper conference at the University of Limerick last month, media commentator Roy Greenslade warned that even an “online revolution” might not be enough to save local Irish titles.
Whatever happens, retaining hyper-local content is critical, O’Hanlon says. “What’s the strongest thing about all newspapers at the moment? It’s their brand.”
