News Corp. news outlets are reporting that the News Corp. board has decided to split the entertainment and newspaper businesses into separate entities. There is no indication yet on what will happen to the Australian assets and whether they will be subject to the split. B&T asks questions on what may happen for the Australian business and hones in on the opinions of media analyst Peter Cox.
Paul Barry writing at The Power Index says the newsroom staff at The Australian have been called to a meeting at tomorrow at 4:15pm when more will be revealed.
Stand by for a sale of the paper arm of News Corp. I suspect the board can no longer accept this loss making part of the business and I consider that the paper, in print form, is looking at a very short window of life.
Brett thats a bit histrionic. Overall newsprint is still porfitable (although major dailies might not be) Additionally there is still opportunity to find efficiencies and synergies to meet the challenge of declining advertising revenues. There is a lot of change to come but it’s not a dead duck.
Here it begins. Kinda makes the whole speel about “combined media” NewsLtd and Kim Williams were throwing around a bit irrelevant. I wander if he was even notified about the possibility of a split.
Oh well, keeps the days interesting.
Ricky,
No hysterics just pragmatic, we need to move on. Thne Australian has never made a profit, regionals and foreign language papers may work but who will print them? We need to move on.
News Ltd will dangle newsagents along
until it suits them to do otherwise.
That is their modus operandi and I don’t
see that changing.
I don’t know what distribution agents can
do about it because they will have nothing
left to sell (commercial risk) but it is an
anathema to me how News Ltd and FF can
make their announcements and yet are still
not accountable to anyone except themselves, for decisions which affect so many people’s livelihoods.
Maybe newsagents should be helping them
along with their decisions??????????????
Retail agents can do this but the poor old
distribution agent has his hands completely tied until a decision is made for
him with no input from him.
It is a disgraceful state of affairs but one
that has been coming for at least a decade
or more.
I think it is a joke that the media (sic) are
only interested in the hacks – there is a
huge infrastructure of self employed people out there who will be disaffected by
the closure of a mainstream paper.
There are newsagents, retailers, distribution couriers, printers, advertisers,
etc etc – it is much more involed than the company itself.
Notice that the media have also largely ignored this plight except for the F/R who
interviewed a couple of newsagents (good newsagents) who have been in business
for many years and they (the newsagents)
said they were “confident” that papers would be around for many years.
I don’t share their optimism with mainstream media but the regional papers will probably survive in their present form.
The fallout from our industry will be huge in terms of unemployment.
Most newsagents will have to reduce their
staff working hours to compensate for the
loss of the paper, not to mention the actual deliverers of the papers themselves.
There is nothing we can do but look for alternative ways to improve our businesses (retail) but distributors are just
stuck with what they have until someone
pulls the rug out from under their feet.
The newspaper reading CUSTOMER of course has been ditched big-time. Apparently no-one needs them at all.
Ok I am confused I haven’t heard of a sale of a newspaper and I haven’t heard the publishing arm is going to be sold due to no profit……
During many interviews it has been stated that the paper is here to stay and that at the moment they are still profitable with consumers still wanting the product.
Please point me in the direction of where all this information is as I am yet to find it.