This is a small country of 4.5 million but these are people who buy newspapers
Ireland will soon play host to the Queen and Barack Obama ? like all good US presidents, Obama claims Irish descent. Visit Dublin's newspaper offices, and you find they're betting which of the two will provide a greater bump to sales. Presidents, though, come here all the time; the smart money is that Her Majesty will win out. Already the special supplements are appearing, with orange and green images of the monarch in the republican country across the water. Prepare too for the pageantry, the history and of course, the present ? the image of Ireland today, the unfinished house on the deserted, rubbish-strewn estate. In 30 seconds of news, this is what a modern day recession looks like.
If this is the bottom for an economy, it must too be the bottom for media. Property advertising is down by between 80% and 95% from the peak four years ago, a fall so severe it is best described as cruel. The Irish Times ? owned by a trust in the fashion of the Guardian ? is losing, it is estimated, at least ?1m (�870,000) a month and probably more. In a market crowded not just with local players but British entrants, the Sunday Tribune lost out, shut by its funder, Independent News & Media, as losses mounted and circulation fell. Yet, for all the real dislocation, it's not as bad as the half-built image suggests.
Nobody is so bold as to call it the bottom. But ? just as happened in the UK in the downturn ? the retailers are still furiously advertising, in pursuit of the last euro in the shops. There is talk of stabilisation in the newspaper business in 2012 ? with television reviving ahead of that. Look, too, at other numbers. Sir Tony O'Reilly may have been humiliated by debt, and so forced into surrendering the Independent in London to the new home of global wealth; but the Independent News & Media he built manages to extract ?53.9m of profits in the country on ?400m of sales. Some of that is from printing Irish editions of London titles, but the core newspaper business still trades at a 13% margin that widget manufacturers would never even hope to aspire to.
Ireland, too, plays its part in propping up Fleet Street. This is a small country of 4.5 million but these are people who buy newspapers. The Sunday Times's Irish edition, amply provided with local content, sells 111,000 weekly, 11% of its UK and Ireland sale. Other beneficiaries are the tabloids in a country whose dailies have always looked somewhat sober ? a Sun that sells 78,000 a day (for a Catholic country, page 3 remains an innovation) and a Daily Mirror that sells 61,000. Both cost ?1 ? 87p ? and while these prices include VAT, that's rather more than the 25p or 45p Brits fork out for the same.
Trading blow for blow with those two is the Irish Daily Star, edited by the rambunctious Ger Colleran, who cheerfully defends the right of glamour models to kiss and tell, bounces up and down in court (getting in trouble for not being prepared to apologise sincerely to a convicted user of child pornography for libelling him) and whose title sells 78,000 ? providing 11% of the Star's headline sale with a version of the paper that would not have the need to put the English Defence League on the front page to get talked about. Oh, and would-be buyers of the title (if you believe the Richard Desmond talk of a sale, that is) should note: the Irish price of the Star is ?1.40, not, say, 20p.
In this milieu the money men stalk. Dermot Desmond, always hopeful of buying cheap and selling dear, is picking up Independent News & Media shares, stake building by the day. Perhaps he too sees the bottom of the cycle. Or reckons another INM shareholder, Denis O'Brien ? still wounded from the tribunal that said he helped bribe a minister to secure a mobile phone licence ? will finally get round to launching a proper bid. There is no shortage of economic problems in Ireland, but if this is the worst of recessions, then it is not so terrifying looking up from the foundations.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/may/16/ireland-print-recession-newspapers
recruitment advertising advertising careers video advertising marketing advertising tips
No comments:
Post a Comment