Santha has brought bad news for the Spanish press. The announcement of the closure of the free newspaper ADN (DNA in English) on 22nd December. To this bitter carbon present it joined last 3rd January the filling for voluntary insolvency declaration by Mediapubli, the publisher of the daily Public, before the court in Barcelona.
The insolvency procedure started by Mediapubli for Público (Public) adds to the one started by The subsidiary of Mediapubli, which publishes the newspaper La Voz de Asturias (The Voice of Asturias). Those are only two examples of the difficult situation in the Spanish press sector, in special in the case of free newspapers.
The causes of this particular crisis have been already summarized by the Association of Spanish Newspaper Publishers (AEDE in Spanish): The general economic and advertising crisis, along with the fact that this kind of publications are living a transformation process – change of model from paper to digital – by the Internet revolution. I agree with this diagnostics as it explains the problem, at least partially.
The remarkable and continued decline in ad spend in newspapers over the past few years in Spain is causing real havoc in the economy of the editorial groups and publishers. Not further, and lacking of a more accurate quantification, the decrease has been about a 12% in 2011, both in the case of free newspapers and of paid newspapers, according to the Zenthinela panel forecast made last December.
The foretell for 2012, recently published, is also no way optimistic. The components of the ZenithVigía panel, composed by senior commercial and marketing executives, as well as by people responsible for research from the media, estimated that investment will keep on its negative trend with falls at a 8.8 % for the paid newspapers at 7.3 % for the free ones.
Participants in the Zenthinela panel (representatives from the advertisers) showed a bit less pessimistic with growth forecasts at a 9% for paid and a 8% for free papers.
However, free newspapers are the publications with the darkest future to this respect. By definition, free involves not receiving any income from sales of copies. This means just depending on the advertising revenues. And the ad source provided a 50% of the income for paid newspapers before the economic crisis.
The difficulties of the free newspapers to survive a prolonged and brutal ad spend crisis is a matter of public commentary for some time. The first to die for starvation was the Metro (Underground), If I can remember it well, this free newspaper died in 2009. Now it comes ADN, the free daily belonging to the Group Planeta. It has been locked out after six years of life, with an average daily distribution of 555,641 copies, according to the latest certification of OJD in June 2011, and an average daily audience, according to the EGM of 1,024,000 people.
ADN was the third in the ranking of the Spanish free newspapers by audience. 20 Minutos (20 Minutes) topped the list with 2,120,000 readers a day, followed by the Qué -What- (1,360,000 ) and at the end came Viva with 106,000 readers.
Looking at such landscape and living an ad spend crisis that still is lasting “for a long while”, one must wonder whether the rest of the free newspaper headings will be able to survive and how long.
Some expert sources on the sector look at the future with not too confident eyes. The lock out of the ADN affects 60 people, who join to the thousands of journalists who have lost their employ in recent times, rising up again the already high jobless rates in Spain.
Mediapubli, which is the publishing company of the daily called Public, launched this left winged newspaper in September 2007.
Now the heading has started last October an ERE (procedure that under a listed number of circumstances, allows the company dismissing a great number of employees without the legally established economic compensation). This ERE procedure resulted in the voluntary resignation -favored by a compensation- of 29 people, plus a 5% to 18% rebate on the wages of the best paid employees.
The insolvency procedure has been started “to safeguard in the best possible way the interests of the parties concerned”, the publishing company of Público says, and “in the face of the escalating advertising crisis, the deep transformation that is living the press sector and the difficulties to access new funding sources.”
“The depth of the economic, advertising and structural crisis the press sector is experiencing makes it unavoidable” -the official declaration released by Mediapubli explains “starting the insolvency procedure as a tool for a restucturing and provide for the future viability of the project”.
The people negatively affected by the bad situation of the daily Public are 160 families. Another company within the Group, the TV chain La Sexta, has recently announced its intention to merge with Antena3. There’s a lot more to watch within this Group, far beyond the unstable situation in Mediapubli.
According to the latest OJD’s certified data, Público has an average daily edition of 129,670 copies, and a circulation of 87,983 copies. Público ranks 14th among paid newspapers, with a circulation 1,000 copies higher than La Razón and 1,000 lower the Heraldo de Aragón.
After all these lock outs and insolvency procedures, there’s no choice for one but wondering how many other newspapers will tumble into “the red”.
Público burst into the Spanish press landscape more than four years ago willing to eating the world. But the outcomes are not precisely the expected. And this fact makes me think that there’s another million dollar question to rise here. Why it seems so difficult for all the radically left winged Spanish newspapers to succeed, both in the ad revenues and the circulation fields?. An interesting point, specially when one considers that, at least theoretically, they should have the audience secured. Despite this, since the democracy started off walking in Spain there have been more than one fiascos of this kind.
Image over the headline.- Paperangelmourn. © Eastwind.
