We have reported time and again that the NYT’s circulation in its home market continues to decline dramatically (most recently 26%), but that the gross circulation numbers are buoyed by its ever expanding national distribution. (The NYT is opening new print distribution centers in Toronto, Houston and maybe five other cities.) Thus we were not surprised to see this in an AFP story:

The San Francisco Chronicle saw circulation fall 17 percent for its Wednesday to Saturday editions, while another big beast of the newspaper jungle, the Boston Globe, slumped 8.2 percent to a weekday average of 414,225. Bucking the trend, two papers — USA Today and the New York Times, the closest to national dailies in the United States — gained readership of just under one percent.

We have read the NYT’s most recent 10Q and unfortunately it does not detail the circulation breakdown in sufficient detail to give you the decline in its circulation in its core 31 counties in the New York metro region. However, the SEC document leads us to the conclusion that the core decline continues: “Our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 26, 2004, details our trends and uncertainties. As of September 25, 2005, there have been no material changes in our trends and uncertainties from December 26, 2004.” We will all just have to wait until the new year to see what has happened to core circulation. We would note that the 8.2% decline in the circulation of the Boston Globe, owned by the NYT, may give an indication of what is happening to the NYT’s own core circulation.

From a financial perspective, the NYT’s performance is not impressive. The company earned $23 million on revenues of $791 million in the third quarter. This profit is less than half that of a year ago (though comparisons are muddied by one-time charges), and only represents a 2.9% profit margin, very low for a media company. We were also surprised at the huge amount of debt that the NYT has, particularly compared to its current profiability: “The Company’s total debt, including commercial paper and capital lease obligations, was $1.3 billion as of September 25, 2005.”

We’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that the 10k, normally filed in late February, will contain some very interesting reading when it comes out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 8:37 am and is filed under Democrats, General, MSM, business, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.