Via Jack Myers: Print Media Face Staggering Challenges for the Foreseeable Future

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This Huffington Post column by Jack Myers is a must-read for anyone in the 'content' business, media an publishing: Print Media Face Staggering Challenges for the Foreseeable Future. Jack is presenting some very hard-hitting stats that are worth sharing here (and that speak for themselves):

"Yellow Pages will dip in 2009 below their 1998 revenues of $12.1 billion. Myers Report (www.myersreport.com) projects Yellow Pages advertising will decline 12 percent in 2009 and 6 to 10 percent in 2010"

"All print media are struggling with the same reality. While some magazine publishers are moving quickly to identify and invest in alternative revenue models...the magazine industry for the most part remains dangerously dependent on traditional print advertising revenues that are eroding at a rate even more dramatic than Yellow Pages' ad revenues"

"Consumer magazine ad revenues will decline 12 to 15 percent in 2008 and even more in 2009. ....the realities are that print-based media are on the decline"

"Newspapers, which do not reap the benefits of high engagement scores (except among Hispanic and African-American readers), are at an even greater disadvantage. In 2001, according to Myers Report, newspaper advertising revenues were $49.2 billion. In 2010, they are projected to be only $28.5 billion, a 42% decline. Consumer magazines are projected to decline in ad revenues from more than $14 billion in 2005 to $10.3 billion in 2010..."

If this is not a call for action, now, I don't know what is. I am working on a longer blog post on what I think could be done to re-invent the print media business - look for this to pop-up on your RSS feeds and Twitter feeds sometime next week.

In the meantime Jack sums it up quite succinctly: "But for the print media industry as a whole, there is a pressing need to adjust to a new reality. There are solutions. There are opportunities. But if management fails to quickly and dramatically heed the clear warning signs of both economic and systemic, secular dangers to their core business, the reality of extinction will face them sooner than they imagine"

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