However, I don’t find it that sobering. Do you? Should we really be surprised that the Tribune is in trouble? So, they don’t want to sell what’s valuable (Cubs, Food Network, CareerBuilder, etc.), and they’d lose a fortune by dumping their core media businesses.

The newspaper business is in trouble, and all the Futurist s in the world probably won’t help.

~ Declining circulation (-3%)
~ Declining revenue (circ. revenue -7% at the Tribune)
~ Profit margins down 1.5%, to just below 20%
~ Classified ad revenue is drying up
~ Worsening mix of circulation to advertising revenue
~ Falling stock prices (-20% on Wall Street)
~ Mature industry
~ Job losses
~ No archival value of product
~ And you still get ink all over your hands when you read ‘em

The sad thing for many publishers and other dinosaurs, is that this story is only news to them.

Have a great weekend,
~G~

Tribune’s two primary businesses — newspapers and TV stations — are concentrated in big-city markets that have taken a pounding from competitors. Its TV stations, such as KTLA in Los Angeles, have lost viewers, and its newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, have lost readers and advertising, largely to the Internet. Nonetheless, Mr. FitzSimons says, “We still like the idea of being in major markets.”

I don’t know much about this stuff, but based on the article, it seems to me the newspaper and television divisions need to be cut back severely and some capital freed up for new ventures. It isn’t clear that newspapers and TV stations can ever be as profitable as they once were, and the cost of being in a major market is high.

But I dunno. It’s really scary stuff, and the worst part about making hard decisions is that when you have something that’s already built, you always think - not wrongly, either - that there’s a chance of working with it, making it profitable. And that chance really exists - the question is whether or not it’ll make one profitable enough.