Love in the Time of Credit Control
It’s the age old conundrum – should the man pay for dinner, or are you prepared to go Dutch? That was the dilema recently posed by a questionnaire to a female friend who is seeking romance on one of the world’s most successful matchmaking websites. The etiquette of who picks up the tab has long been discussed between the sexes, with the traditional role of the man as bill-payer challenged by the feminist movement of the 1970s and onwards. But in these uncertain times, with the Credit Crunch starting to bite, fuel costs astronomical and growth slowing to a trickle – are you more likely to date somebody who’s good with money, asks the aforementioned survey?
Yet it is not only the perpetual motion of young lovers’ courtship that may be hit by an economic downturn; the impact will surely be felt in the media and communications worlds too. On the face of it the media industry faces a period of sustained hardship. Take, for example, the recent round of layoffs at some of the leading newspapers in the United States, including the 1400 fired in a 10% staff reduction across the McClatchy newspaper group, or the much-discussed elimination of 100 newsroom positions at the New York Times. Couple that with undisclosed lays offs at B2B publishers such as Ziff Davis Enterprises and, in total, some estimates put US media job losses at more than 4,000 in 2008 alone.
There are some more subtle market changes at play of course, other than the global economic downturn. In the McClatchy case, while print advertising revenue had fallen by 15% over the past year, online sales – a smaller segment of group revenue – had grown by just 13%. Indeed, this is a trend that has been prevalent across a number of international publishing groups with journalists increasingly producing copy for online titles, while print magazines become thinner by the month as content continues to chase the advertising dollar.
Changes too have been taking place in major UK media outlets, with journalists at The Independent fighting cost-cutting moves to introduce seven-day working across their daily and Sunday titles. Meanwhile, News International’s subsidiary BSkyB is contemplating job-cuts at its loss-making magazine department. It is telling that most UK print trade titles are now staffed by a vastly reduced editorial team, while national newspapers have increased flexibility by turning to freelance writers.
With consumer spending unlikely to remain as robust in the coming year – and advertising dollars inevitably falling as a result – the question remains, which media titles will best survive? If job cuts are unavoidable in the print world, could streamlined, fast moving online titles benefit from a lower cost base? Moreover, there is an argument to say the seemingly inextricable rise of the blogger – with zero cost self-publishing now an established norm – could become even more prevalent in the recession. There is, after all, no suggestion that the downturn has hit consumers’ insatiable appetite for content.
Perhaps even more important to the emerging tech PR community are the movements in the Venture Capitalist community, with some analyst firms suggesting that US VC spending is slowing. There has even been speculation in some quarters that the world’s local bank is denying social media and mobile tech start-ups a bank account as they are seen as high risk in the present climate. And while fewer companies may find backing in the coming year, there is little evidence – yet – that the mass 2001 dotcom cull is to be repeated.
Venture Capitalism is, of course, not unlike that dating game. Financiers and entrepreneurs circle each other with increasingly amorous glances until one makes a move. The question is, in troubled times, who’ll really be footing the bill?
Tags: Credit Crunch, dating, media job losses
Posted by Ed Barker on June 20, 2008 at 11:55 AM
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