Newspapers Experience Worst Year Since Recession 11.08.2005
This year is shaping up as the newspaper industry's worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession, according to a report from Goldman Sachs, and meaningful growth in 2006 is "very unlikely," Mediapost reports. National advertising and the retail category have remained essentially flat, while print and online have shown positive gains of 4 to 5 percent.
Goldman Sachs has revised its 2006 growth forecast to 3.5 percent, down from 4.0 percent. National ad growth is expected to be weakest at 1.0 percent, followed by retail (2.5 percent) and classifieds (3.6 percent).
However, online newspaper revenues are projected to grow 25 percent - but will still represent only 5.0 percent of total newspaper revenues.