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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: Cost Of Newspaper Advertising
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Wayne Keyser
Master Film Handler
Posts: 272
From: Arlington, Virginia, USA
Registered: May 2004
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posted 12-12-2007 10:03 PM
The earlier post, by Scott Jentsch, is exactly what I was talking about.
However, remember that we here are a computer-using, theater-savvy bunch. You can't leave a substantial part of your demographic "in the dark" - and I don't mean 'the majority,' I mean that you can't suddenly forget about 20% (or whatever) - whoever those people are, the ditchdigger who doesn't even have a computer, the secretary who gets home and has had more than enough computers for one day, grandma whose VCR still blinks "12:00", whomever. Oh, yeah ... let's not forget about the person who's already out, away from their computer, and suddenly decides to take in a movie so they buy a paper.
Best idea I've seen here: that coupon idea.
It would be an easier decision if you were a multiplex (economies of scale) - but you're just one screen.
Did I get it right that you're talking about the Byrd? One screen ... but a national treasure, and I'm not using that term lightly. Many happy memories from my days at U of Richmond.
Then again, there's the Times Dispatch ... many less happy memories from my days in their pasteup department.
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Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-14-2007 01:58 PM
I noticed last week that Carmike had a normal sized ad in the newspaper, taking the same space as the usual ad with the showtimes, but it just said to call the theatre for showtimes. I rode by this theatre here in Huntsville, the Carmike 10, a few nights ago around 10:30 and the theatre was closed. The electronic showtimes display only showed the 7ish showings, and no 9:00 showings. Does this mean this theatre will be biting the dust soon? I hate to see that, because they recently went all-digital projection and it was the first theatre in town with all side masking and adjustable masking on all screens for both 1.85:1 and 2.39:1, plus it was the first with all-digital sound and all-stadium seating. it will have been open 10 years on March 5, 2008.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-15-2007 11:57 AM
People buy newspapers for the news. But if all they're reading is old news why buy the paper in the first place?
Over the past decade, the delivery of news information has evolved farther and farther away from the old paradigm.
Up until the early 1990s, news delivery was still on a day by day cycle. Broadcast television news was primarily geared for a once-per-evening model, giving you a summary of that day's news. Newspapers give you yesterday's news -everything that happened up until 2 or 3 hours before the issue went to print. Both of those models are now badly obsolete.
24 hour cable news networks spotlighted the limits of traditional broadcast news models during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Increasing sophistication of the Internet has dramatically one-upped anything newspapers can do.
Events and incidents which qualify as news happen 24 hours per day. Traditional network news and newspapers cannot easily tell the public about those events soon after they happen. You're always stuck with a serious time lag. More and more often, I'm getting important news, even local news, first on the Internet. By the time the local TV stations and newspaper get around to telling the story I already know about it.
That problem is especially bad for newspapers. Most people do not buy newspapers for the ads and coupons. Hell, every Wednesday I get a bunch of coupons stuffed into my mailbox even though I don't take the paper anymore.
I think local newspapers will have to become more feature-driven like some larger newspapers and national TV news programs. They're going to have to provide news stories you can't get anywhere else in order to remain relevant. Unfortunately, most local papers don't have the budget or work flow design to accommodate such a thing.
Those high newspaper ad prices are there to subsidize a really expensive infrastructure to mass publish issues on dead trees and pay the staff who has to compose all those pages day in and day out. Declining readership makes it very difficult for the newspaper publishers to justify those prices. Ad customers are getting more savvy about factors like cost per thousand exposures and lots of other marketing stuff. With a currently slowing economy, many businesses (wrongfully) cut into their ad budgets first or just look for ways to get the most bang for their buck.
I think we're going to see a good number of local newspapers and maybe even some larger ones go out of business over the next few years. I can certainly see our local Lawton Constitution going under.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-15-2007 05:10 PM
quote: Mike Blakesley
Oh yeah? I can't read the internet while I'm taking a crap...
You can read the latest news while taking a dump using a WiFi connected notebook computer or even a modern cellular phone or PDA.
quote: Mike Blakesley
...and I can't swat a fly with the internet either.
Swatting flies is a silly purpose for buying day old news in a news paper. I'll go with the regular plastic fly swatter more suited to the purpose. It holds up a lot better and kills far more flies.
Do we want to bring up the purpose of lining the bottom of bird cages?
quote: Mike Blakesley
The computer does a lot of things very well, but it can't replace the relaxing experience of reading the daily paper.
When very little of the content is unique and all of it a day old or more it is very difficult to see the value in newspapers anymore. Maybe some of the other
quote: Mike Blakesley
Newspapers will always excel at one thing vs. TV: Details.
That's comparing newspapers with TV, not the Internet. I've seen plenty of newspapers fill their colums word for word with the wire reports from the Associated Press, UPI and Reuters. I often see those reports in their entirety nearly a full day before they appear in the newspapers.
quote: Mike Blakesley
Plus, once it's in print it's forever, so newspapers must have a higher standard of responsibility to make sure the story is correct before it goes on paper.
We've seen various scandals come to light in newspaper reporting. There's the NY Times reporter who made up his stories. Some newspapers have been busted for copying/pasting the content from opinion blogs and other not so credible sources and reporting them as fact. In general, standards in journalism have declined by a great deal. It's especially unfortunate that ethical standards have been thrown out the window.
The Lawton Constitution in my town is not doing a very good job because it is not doing enough to report unique, local news. It isn't working to be an output for the collective community voice. Instead it's just rubber stamping day old crap I already know about. When that's the main part of the product, it's turning into a waste of money and a waste of time to read.
I do like certain comic strips. However, I tend to buy the anthology books instead of reading the strips peace-meal in the daily paper.
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Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-15-2007 06:40 PM
There one bad thing about the demise of newspapers -- news archiving over the years. Go to any city's library and the newspapers from way back, all the way to the present, will be on microfilm and if you want to see what was going on in February 1949, just get that reel and put it in the machine and it's there. You can go through the front pages, the whole paper, the ads, or any part and learn a great deal of what was going on at that time, what was being advertised, at what prices, and so on. My movie theatre research would have been practically impossible without it. Try to find a newspaper article more than a few months old on the internet. Most newspaper sites severely limit archive searching, and in some cases, it's to two weeks back. If we're not careful, we're going to lose years of news data if there is not a publically-available archive of all the news items. Imagine if newspapers went away and all news sites became like TV station news sites where yesterday's news stories are already gone irretrievably.
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 12-15-2007 08:48 PM
If newspapers go away, and news dissemination is purely electronic, we lose the paper trail, so to speak. A newspaper puts out thousands of printed copies, with each copy like an official record of the news. It can't be tampered with, retracted, edited, etc. at the whim of the publisher, or by disagreeing readers or people with opposing agendas. Oh yeah, the publisher can print later corrections, but they can't just go back and edit or destroy what they said, at least not without an explanation. "We never said that!" doesn't apply to newspapers. It does apply to online news sources. If I'm reposting an electronic article from an online source, I can edit it to say whatever I want and who's going to fact-check it to see if it matches the original article? What happens when the original electronic version is withdrawn, as they all seem to be sooner or later? The reposted versions can be very easily tampered with.
Just like we can edit our posts here. If we couldn't edit our posts, we might be more careful about what we say.
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