[LINK] "Quebecor and Torstar results: newspapers bleeding badly"

[rfmcdonald]

Postmedia News' Christine Dobby wrote last week about the ongoing issues of the Canadian mass media.

When two of Canada’s largest owners of print media reported dismal quarterly results Wednesday, the message was familiar: print advertising is disappearing at a rate that digital revenues can’t replace, online competition for ad dollars from the Googles of the world is fierce and cost-cutting can’t come fast enough.

Torstar Corp. posted another period of plunging revenue at its media division, which includes the Metro free daily newspapers and the Toronto Star, where print advertising sales were down 16.3 per cent year-over-year. During the quarter, the company announced voluntary buyouts and a round of layoffs at the newspaper and in an early morning conference call, executives said finding further cost savings remains a priority.

Later in the day David Holland, Torstar president and chief executive, was blunt in his observation to a crowd gathered for his company’s annual general meeting.

“We are in a time of change. For many years, media companies with newspaper operations lived a privileged existence — those days are long gone.”

[. . .]

Meanwhile, Quebecor Inc., the vertically integrated player that dominates much of Quebec’s media market, reported similar results from its news media division, which includes the chain of Sun newspapers. Cost-cutting measures could not keep up with falling revenues during the quarter, Pierre Karl Peladeau, outgoing chief executive officer of Quebecor and chairman of the board of Quebecor Media, said in a statement Wednesday morning.

“At the moment, our print business is profitable. But let’s not bury our heads in the sand. We’re in decline. There is significant pressure on ad revenue,” he later told reporters at a news conference following the company’s annual meeting in Montreal.