A regional publisher has announced a “modest” half-yearly rise in overall revenues, due in part to cover price increases offsetting circulation declines.
Archant says price rises on its four daily titles partially account for a “strong start” to 2015, in which digital revenues have also grown.
In January the company’s Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times titles saw their cover prices increase from 75p to 80p on weekdays, and £1.50 to £1.60 for their Saturday editions.
The daily price of both the Ipswich Star and Norwich Evening News also increased from 60p to 65p.
It helped account for what the company is calling “modest” overall revenue growth in the period January to June, although it has declined to put a percentage figure on it.
Archant also reported that newspaper advertising revenues were down less than 1pc, which it says is ahead of industry trends.
In a letter to shareholders, chairman Simon Bax said: “Our plans to make the core of the business robust are progressing well.
“Our half-year financial performance gives us every reason to be positive for the second half of the year, however, the general environment for local media companies remains challenging.”
Simon, pictured above left, continued: “The One Archant strategy is bearing fruit. The core of the business is performing well, there are fewer barriers to change, and clarity in reporting lines means that there is less duplication.
“With greater ability to implement Archant-wide initiatives and thus maximise the value of our total portfolio, the company is seeing significant benefits in both co-operation and morale.”
A total of £4m cash was generated by the company during the period, with £6.8m cash on hand at the end of June.
Jeff Henry, chief executive officer, said: “We have had a good first six months of the year against challenging conditions.
“Congratulations should go to all of our colleagues for a great team effort in out-performing our industry peers and setting the company firmly in the right direction.”
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The elevated upward fluidity of pecuniary compensation can unequivocally be attribulated to the consolidation of assets and resources and improved synigisation between corporate divisions. Accompanied by an insouciance to brand quality and shared content delivery, the company has optimisated its input while minimising staff enchantment and comprehensively crushing the human spirit.
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The broadcast from No Prospects House is a landmark of concise prose – brilliant – but let’s give Archant credit for thanking staff for their efforts. Local World’s profits announcement earlier this year contained not one word of thanks or acknowledgement to those directly making the jam and even the internal company website kept schtum. That’s a communications company for you, I guess.
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All I’ll say Dick is ‘ words are cheap’ a bit like the 1980s PowerPoint presentation that Jock Henry presented from.
Actions speak louder and they’re still surrounding themselves with yes men and those of least resistance with little regard for majority of the real workers.
‘ the best media group in the UK by 2017′ I think he said his aim was , presumably by that time they will have pulled the plug on Mustard TV ,changed their whole editorial content policy,shut down the ridiculous investigations unit and made the god awful evening news a free or closed it altogether. Then they might have a chance
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Morale high?? Who are these people talking to? Selected and safe sales people and the same tired old middle managers desperate to cling on in there I can only assume.
There has been no tangible change in the middle ranks with the same old faces still shuffling papers and calling it managing people despite Jeff Henrys tie off sleeves up statement to make changes and make them happen quick.
Putting up the cover price on dire daily titles is a short term strategy but is useful for papering over the cracks of falling sales. Far better to speak to some of the many thousands who no longer buy and finding out why ?
Those who continue to buy, many for reasons of habit,are the poor souls being penalised by creeping up the cover price under cover of darkness when the real story ( for the infamous AIU to investigate?) is why so many no longer do so.
Buy here, some questions are better left unasked for fear of the answer being not what they want to hear.
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Does Simon Bax really talk like that or does Harry Enfield write his scripts?
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So an upbeat Mr Bax is predicting a nice bonus for staff at Christmas, if his “positive” forecasts are correct?
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What a load of squit from the usual suspects. Investing in TV and broadband distribution too. Marvellous stuff. Well done Archant.
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I don’t know whether the Henrys and Baxs of this world really believe this stuff, whether it’s the sort of thing they think the shareholders want to hear or whether they’re as clueless and incapable of stopping the decline as the previous top floor incumbents were.
Either way the only changes we have seen have been retrograde ones. If they were serious in making changes they would do all of the things mentioned by not a manager and more.
Almost a year on and it’s still a sinking ship without a captain and as before its every man or woman for themselves while the fat cats get fatter on the back of efforts of others. If the only sign of success is a cover price hike then there’s not much hope for the business is there.
Oh and morale is probably worse than ever due to these false promises and shallow boasts which have come to nothing.
Maybe the situation is worse than either or both of them thought it was at first glance?
Same old same old
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So Simon and Jeff, Ad revenues down is something to celebrate?
One ‘live ‘ mustard TV broadcast out of two to actually get to air is something to celebrate?
charging more for ailing failing daily papers to offset huge copy sales losses is also something to celebrate?
print portfolio copy sales in free fall and at all time lows is something to celebrate ?
And a so called investigations unit that pats itself on the back for coming up with the most basic bog standard stories that any junior could be expected to produce is also something to celebrate ?
My oh my, it really is Incredible to witness just how far this company’s standards and levels of expectation have dropped in so short a period of time.
And Jeff Henry laughingly wants Archant to be the best regional news group in the UK by 2017
Although he has no background in print media,journalism or sales he’d better think again if these are the markers of achievement and levels of competence he’s he’s happy with so far.
Crisis? What crisis?
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Simon Bax refers to modest like for like revenue growth ‘after adjusting for the disposal of some magazine titles during the period’ so it’s clear that without selling these products/ brands to raise funds the revenue and profits would actually be down and there would be no like for like growth and nothing positive to report to shareholders unless you include putting the price up on papers fewer people are choosing to buy.
By ‘ like for like’ I assume he means against the previous year which itself was a disaster and this was even down on the previous years underperforming figures which again gives a true measure of how low the expectations are at Archant these days .
If the top tablers spoke openly and honestly about the state of the business without trying to pull the wool over shareholders, staff and customers eyes for once and said it as it really was then the staff would be more inclined to pull together and they would gain people’s respect.we all know how bad things are so trying to divert attention from the true situation just treats everyone like idiots.
If they said it’s not good enough, these are the issues, these are the areas we plan to redress and this is what we are doing about it they would be taken seriously rather than being seen as trotting out words as opposed to taking action and actually doing something positive to turn things round.
While there’s this bs PR spin put on the figures and financial situation and the management structure remains as it was stuffed full of too many cheap suits pushing paper around all day not doing anything positive to drive the business then no one will have any faith or confidence in the board and the One Archant catchphrase will remain mere words.
However expecting straight talking is obviously expecting too much going by the quotes from SB in this story.
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The price rises on some papers were puzzling
Poorer area Newham Recorder – up from 55p to 75p, better off area Ilford Recorder 60p to 70p.
Posher more prosperous (?) Romford Recorder, 80p to 90p
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Talking to ex-Archant staff, it seems to me that the problem is that the suits have their own exit strategy carefully worked out.
The ship is sinking all right, but the suits will be rescued by helicopter.
When Archant goes under, some of the crew will get away in the lifeboats, many will drown, but the suits will be high and dry.
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Does Archant still profess to have its set of four values – innovation, openness , quality and commitment?
The directors used to trumpet these with unerring regularity, but maybe these are now out of sight, out of mind as the company struggles to get grips with the roof crashing in around them.
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Insider Norfolk suggests the management adopts a strategy of telling staff: These are the problems, these are the areas we plan to redress and this is what we are doing about it.
But there-in lies the problem.
1: Printed newspaper circulations (dailies in particular) are sharply falling. There is no apparent solution to this. The only way of generating revenue in this market is therefore to charge people more for them. And this is a win / win for a while as fewer people buying them actually lowers some costs for more revenue.
2: Advertising revenue is falling across the newspaper sector: This is where digital comes in, but no-one has found a way to make digital pay. Most newspapers don’t even factor in the journalistic costs to their digital revenue figures. We can all make money when you don’t allocate costs to a project.
3: So with falling sales and falling revenue, how do we balance the books. Cut costs. This can be achieved by increasing free reader content, lowering production costs, and slashing the most expensive part of the business – the wage bill.
That is the capitalist reality.
I am not sure spelling all of that out to staff would be all that helpful…
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Easily Gathered (first comment) should go into top management. What he has wrote like makes moor senz than the rubbish put out by most managements these days, innit.
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I wholly agree cynic but they would only be telling us what we know and can see with our own eyes.
They are only spouting off this guff to outsiders including shareholders. Shareholders want to know the real health of the business and what direct plans are in place to redress the situation, attempting to pull the wool overhyped eyes with jokey asides and alls well and it’s looking good nonsense fools no one
With regards to point 1
This does not reduce costs , the cost base remains the same, it adds to the top line revenues not necesstily profits
2 ad revenues
Whilst they are so poor there’s a need to lol at staff numbers and what the costs are, we all know that there’s too many ad managers, team leaders who contribute what to the profits,properly ascertaining what these people do will, in all likelihood allow some of the deadwood to be cut out which will reduce costs even with no more revenue sold.
3 acting on points 1 and 2 will result in costs reduced
All good points cynic but we are all weary of false promises, lack of action and new names coming in doing nothing constructive to get the company back on track
It seems the number one objective is to cover cracks and justify roles .
Honesty , openness and involvement / a voice listened to are all we ask and that’s not much to expect
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Not so old hack you assume there’s some logic when Archant increase cover charges? There isn’t, it’s a straight across the board price rise to grab money from the easiest source eg: current users irrespective of the demographic profile of the papers footprint , sorry I appear to have slipped into ‘ Bax speak ‘ for a moment there
It’s all about turning a quick buck
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According to the report on Archant’s results in the Guardian, Mr Henry said costs had been cut at Mustard TV, it was still not profitable but it was now “moving in the right direction”. What direction is that? Suggestions please.
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Old Hack
Moving towards them having seen enough to close it down I’d say and my guess is by year end or by the end of the current financial year April 2016
However just think of the opportunities to further embarrass the company they’ll have in that time
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An opportune moment to remind ourselves of the latest output from the Archant Infestation Unit: a two page spread on how some councils own commercial assets but it’s not really a problem, solely supported, for some reason, by an old irrelevant ministerial quote about brownfield development. Perhaps somebody forget to look up the definition of brownfield and, erm, development. At best a story based on a false premise and, at worst, a story with no premise at all.
Oh, and something you can’t help but think you heard before years ago and didn’t care much about then about sheep dip possibly being harmful. Published in a county with virtually no sheep farms.
Tune in next time for an exposé on how houses cost more in expensive areas.
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“Costs have been cut at Mustard TV.”
From what, to what? Where have the cuts been made?
Mustard is “moving in the right direction”
When will it be profitable?
More detail, indeed any detail please. I’m all ears.
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Back To The Future … It beggar’s belief that after peddling price rise after price rise for the last 40 years that I can recall, a major regional player still has no more productive ideas to shake off the malaise that is crippling their industry.
Ah, but whait a minute – what about Mustard TV, I hear you ask? It has as bright a future as the late unlamented Channel M in Manchester.
The newspaper readers of East Anglia had best prepare for some more price rises.
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The comments on here sum up both the state of the business and the feelings of majority of the staff but I doubt anyone from the top floor / board ever bother to read these comments.
In my experience there’s more sense talked, suggestions made and honest open discussion on here than you’d ever get the opportunity to do within the business itself which just adds to the frustration of the masses who’s voice isn’t heard, who’s views are not thought worthy of consideration and who feel intimidated to speak up for fear of being considered negative and all the fall out that goes with it by those not wanting to rock the boat.
It’s well known that the company is over blessed ‘yes men’ and far too top heavy with managers,most who contribute very little to the business if anything, yet increase the cost base by a substantial figure with salaries,bonus,company cars,expenses and more, costs that if they were reduced would have almost no negative impact on productivity yet have a huge positive effect on outgoings.
Maybe if Mssrs Henry and Bax took note of the comments on here they might get a truer picture of the real morale with in the company and get a few pointers as to how to move the business forward.
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Sounds like a typical place where they hold meetings about arrangements for meetings to plan more meetings and nothing is done other than to plan to hold yet more meetings once a meeting is held to plan the new meetings.
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Archantlifer
If you can get any information or facts and real figures from the bean counters or those supposedly running this car crash channel then you’re a better man than most of us are here as many of us have asked and all of us have failed to get this most basic of information about Mustard TV.
Perhaps if they were more open and honest with the details costs revenues etc we would be able to see how this part of the business is doing, however this may very well be the reason they don’t want us to know.
No doubt if it was profitable then all and sundry would be crowing and tweeting about it and jumping on the bandwagon of its success.
Please let us know if you manage to get this highly secret information as we are all keen to know
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It’s not looking good for the new regime is it?
Having come in late last year promising a new era and radical change the results so far after almost a year have been the proverbial damp squib.
On the issue of increasing the cover charge on their daily titles, the same is true with commercial ad revenues. Whilst the copy numbers and papers sold has been hugely reduced and now stand at all time record low circulation numbers, the price to advertise and the rate card have remained on the increase so the effect is the same as creeping on a few pence to every copy sold; penalise your captive audience/ customers/ readers and advertisers by charging more for less.
Once customers cotton on to this fact they will see just what they’re getting for their money which is far less than they used to and will in all likelihood vote with their feet or expect the price they pay to advertise to be reduced to reflect the decrease in readers buying the papers.
The ad reps say they are told not to talk numbers and to package up print and digital at every opportunity to fudge the copy number issue in the belief that you can fool some of the people some of the time so It’s no wonder a number of highly successful competitor papers and magazines have opened up in Archants own back yard and are attracting ex customers and readers in droves.These competitors are no doubt quick to share the ABC numbers and facts and figures that Archants own people have to keep under lock and key and look to be thriving as a result.
On this point the talent, experience and knowledge that’s been allowed to leave the business is shocking with many ex Archant staff earning good livings and thriving working on competitor publications and in many cases now writing for and selling against Archants own titles , you can’t help but think how different the picture might be if some of those people were still in the business today.
These latest results are as bad as any I can recall in 18 years in the regional press and with no one making money from web pages, digital advertising, local TV or paid for content and with no obvious recovery plans in place, it’s time to accept the glory days of vast copy sales and businesses queuing up to spend money with Archant are gone and plan a trimmed down leaner and meaner business plan going forward using the more professional high calibre staff who can actively bring about recovery whilst sidelining those who’ve been clinging to the wreckage for far too long and contributing very little before the whole house of cards collapses in on the lot of them.
Cause and effect
Profit and loss
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Now that Archant is run by highly paid bean counters and suits from the digital and pay per view meeeja with no journalistic print or publishing experience ( or knowledge) between them it’s easy to see just how big a task and how out of their depths they are.
Bold boasts and tub thumping account for nothing with half year results so bad that penny pinching on cover prices and selling off magazine brands is seen as the way forward without addressing the real issues that are all too apparent to those of us working there.
Tackle the real problems rather than celebrating what other business’s would see as failures.
And no, morale certainly has not improved.
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Crap management is nothing new in newspapers. The crucial difference is when money was awash and with no digital competition the incompetence could be absorbed. ( I remember a colleague saying in the 80s my already flourishing paper could have doubled its profits if it had some good managers)
In these tougher times top quality management is required. And the industry generally, with a few exceptions, does not have it
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In my humble opinion you don’t have to read too far between the lines to see how far away from traditional print the company is rapidly moving.
The investments in wispire, focus on digital growth, removing all trace of the daily titles from the front of the Norwich building,lack of development for the weekly titles,the acceptance of underperforming titles and individuals on the print side of the business rather than showing their hand, taking action and closing them, the ridiculous setting up of a special investigations unit clearly to trial how few people are needed to handle the odd story while relying more on rgc thus reducing costs in the editorial and print sector and pumping good money after bad into the abysmal vanity project that is Mustard TV which any other self respecting business would have closed down months ago,and now with the latest non print initiative the Norfolk and Suffolk top 100 companies app, something else that used to be a staple print regular.
All clearly point to a focus on trying to develop non print media and getting out of traditional print altogether.
If it wasn’t for a fear of another media group moving in on the area by opening competitor print titles and thus posing a threat to Archants overall commercial revenues then I am sure they would have pulled the plug on a number of ailing titles across the county long ago, titles that are allowed to continue publishing by propping them up until the time is right to announce their closure.
With both Henry and Bax coming from broadcast/ digital media backgrounds and with apparently no experience in traditional print media it seems the decision to develop the company as an electronic / non print media one was taken some time ago hence their appointments.
All we are seeing at the moment is a print media exit plan being rolled out under the noses of the staff, bad news if you’re involved in the newspaper or print side of the business and embarrassing if you’re one of the nodding donkeys who believe the plans involve anything other than stepping away from newspaper production in the long term .
Contract print and specialist publishing will keep part of the costly print shops open whilst the need for expensive buildings with high overheads in the city and branches will become unnecessary and surplus to requirement, those owned will enable sizeable sums of money to be raised along with huge cost savings.
Worrying times but not surprising as the signs are there and the answers have been hiding in full sight under everyone’s noses for quite some time .
Then again I could be wrong?
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Does anyone realise what a critical time the next year is going to be in the media?
Digital income growing far too slowly. Print struggling with tumbling sales and in many cases poor quality.
Will something give big time in August 2016?
Let’s hope not.
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@chaingangster
Copy sales in freefall and getting worse,no long term sustainable new revenue sources, no outward investment in any print products,minimal revenues from digital, commercial ad revenues at all time lows with a reliance on rate cutting or yield destroying annual agreements coupled with huge overheads and high cost bases,over loaded with staff majority of who are out of their depths trying to sell specialist new media , and top heavy with managers contributing little or nothing, worrying times at Archant,somethings got to give
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