Monday, October 09, 2006

 

BLS Finds 810,000 Jobs! Soft Newspaper Revenue (That's What They Get for Not Having Hard News), Channel Conflict (Blame it on iTunes)

NY Times coverages of the Association of National Advertisers where they discuss participatory or "bottom-up" marketing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/media/09adcol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print
“Content is no longer something you push out. Content is an invitation to engage with your brand.”

Newspaper revenue is "softening." I've noticed all those stories comparing newspaper company valuations on the stock market compared to other industries, and also those that say "things are not so bad." For the former, comparison to other industries does not matter, it's comparison to what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. And as fars as "things are not so bad", then why the layoffs?
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003221595
While publishers are shifting more to online to slow the print ad slowdown, the benefits may not be realized immediately... it will probably take until 2008 before online revenue is big enough to start making a financial impact.
Well, yet another situation where the old business is declining and the new one is growing but the top line is stagnant? There's lots of situations where the dynamism is obscured by the aggregate, until there is a breakout to the upside. I think it will take longer than they think and newspaper owners will become very impatient. Look for more deals!

Small bookstores are fighting back against amazon.com and others. Interesting article.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8KKJC104.htm

I love channel conflict stories like the bookstore one. But here's a bigger one: Target complaining that downloads are hurting its DVD sales. Apple is the problem. Target will stop investing in DVDs; if this is fixed, it will only be temporary.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116035902475586468.html?mod=hps_us_pageone

The Bureau of Labor Satistics "missed" 810,000 jobs! Last Friday, the news reports were that payroll increased only +51,000 jobs. But the household survey showed an increase of 271,000 jobs. And now, this comment in the report, on the last page, is starting to get some attention. Yet again, we set another record for the number of people employed.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Each year, the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey data are benchmarked to comprehensive counts of employment for the month of March derived from state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file. For national CES series, the annual benchmark revisions over the last 10 years have averaged plus or minus two-tenths of one percent. The preliminary estimate of the benchmark revision for March 2006 is +810,000 (0.6 percent).
Again, I strongly recommend Gene Epstein's book, "Econospinning", which digs into this kind of thing, and how the business press, rarely reads past paragraph 2 of any press release.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=as2&path=ASIN/0471735132&tag=drjoewebbcom-20&camp=1789&creative=9325

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