Changing Times Compel New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) To Phase Out Its Print Product

The New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT) is changing. closed at $19.10 gaining 0.53% in yesterday’s trading session. In the media industry, the quarterly earnings season over the years has been associated with valuable trends. In comparison to most of the tech companies, the financials of New York Times are coming out murky. One thing is pretty clear though from the company’s quarterly statement for the second period of this year: there is indeed great need to take some steps of major change.

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Looking at the most recent financial figures, there is much to tell regarding the company’s financial status. The recent quarters seem to be speaking a ‘similar language.’ It is quite evident that print is crumbling. This is both in terms of the associated advertising revenue and circulation.

It is not a shocker that the weekday print sales tend to be declining much faster in relation to the iconic Sunday edition. The arrangement reportedly gave the least expensive digital access to the various subscribers.

New York Times Company is not committed to giving a break down for its weekly vs. weekend advertising revenues and this doesn’t augur well with a lot of people.

Let’s take for instance that the weekend edition makes up for about 50% of the publication’s print ad revenue. It then goes without saying that it would as well be appropriate to discontinue the week’s daily print edition.

As was brought out in the previous quarterly statements, the improved revenue stream for print emanates from the various subscriptions as well as from a price hike for newsstand copy sales. Normally, this indicates a dying business as was stated by the NYU Stern’s marketing professor Scott Galloway.

Usually, when an industry is ripe to be disrupted, it starts doing a number of things to adapt. It may start off by raising its prices faster than inflation despite viewership going down. It is a similar case for print media globally and the only country that is an exception to this is India.

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