Media Briefing: What four publishers’ latest earnings reports indicate about their digital makeovers

By Tim Peterson

This week’s Media Briefing recaps the latest earnings reports from four media companies and reviews what they indicate about the current stages of traditional publishers remaking themselves into digital organizations.

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The key hits:

Direct revenue, like subscriptions, was a particular bright spot for publishers in the third quarter of 2021.
Digital continues to widen its lead over print for publishers’ advertising businesses.
Publishers’ subscription businesses are also growing, but not all have seen digital subscriptions surpass print.

They’re almost all digital media companies now.

With digital darlings like BuzzFeed on the verge of becoming public companies, the publishers already trading publicly continue to transform themselves from print-centric operations to digitally-oriented organizations. Of course, some are further along in making that move, especially with respect to their digital subscription businesses, based on the recent earnings reports released by News Corp., Gannett, Meredith and The New York Times.

Dow Jones

In Q3 2021, direct revenue, like subscriptions and newsstand sales, was the big moneymaker for Dow Jones, the News Corp. division that includes The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barron’s.

Dow Jones’ revenue increased by 15% to reach $444 million. And a majority of the increased revenue came from Dow Jones’ circulation and subscription revenue, which recorded a revenue increase of $38 million, or 66% of the division’s overall $58 million revenue increase.

Dow Jones ended the quarter with 4.6 million subscriptions, up 18% year over year. The Wall Street Journal accounted for more roughly 3.5 million of those subscriptions, with digital-only subscriptions at 2.8 million to represent 80% of the the news publication’s total amount, up from 79% in the second quarter of 2021.

News Corp. doesn’t report specific revenue figures for Dow Jones’ subscription and advertising businesses. But the former revenue stream increased its figure by 12% year over year, while the latter saw its revenue rise by 29%. Although digital grew its revenue contribution by 38%, print advertising revenue rebounded by 17% year over year.

That being said, digital continues to eclipse print’s revenue share with respect to advertising as it does overall. Digital made up 61% of Dow Jones’ total advertising revenue, ticking up from 56% in Q2 2021. Overall, digital represented 75% of the division’s total revenue for the quarter.

Gannett

Gannett’s digital business is still in the process of catching up to its legacy print business.

In Q2 2021, digital revenue increased by 18% year over over year to reach $265 million, which equated to 33% of the USA Today publisher’s total revenue. The digital revenue growth was not enough to offset some apparent sagging on the print side, as Gannett’s total revenue dipped by 2% year over year to $800.2 million.

During a quarter in which USA Today debuted its USA Today Sports+ subscription product, Gannett’s digital-only subscriber base expanded by 46% year over year to reach 1.5 million subscribers. That’s up from 1.4 …read more

Source:: Digiday