Numbers Are a Nuisance: Tribune, WSJ, Cable and the Unreal O.C.

Numbers that caught my eye recently:

• When 50/50's not even: Out of our Zellous digging into the Tribune sale, consider this. While about 70% of Tribune's revenues come out of its newspaper division and only about 30% from broadcast and enterainment, a little more than half of its profits ($110 million to $102 million in the second quarter) come from broadcast and entertainment. So..........if the plan for the New Tribune is keep the newspapers intact, as CEO Dennis FitzSimons says, and it sells off Cubs and Cable (already announced as up for sale), the Food Network 30% share and more/almost all of its remaining 23 broadcast stations, it will be left with the part of the business that's sinking.

         That's a little like Best Buy having to cut back and selling off its HDTV and iPod departments and keeping its tube TVs and Walkmans.

• 20.9%: That's the amount Wall Street Journal ad volume was down in July. That's a big number. Look at it as one in five advertisers or a fifth less spending from all its advertisers, though it's certainly a combination of the two. Though it's a  one-month number, it's a scary one. Ad revenue was only down 7% for the month. But if volume continues to decrease, it's going to be increasingly harder to price up the ads that do sell. Who's the culprit here? Tech advertising in print crashed, down 75% in volume. Tech advertisers -- an early barometer of advertiser behavior -- are finding interactive ads increasingly useful, effective and cheaper.

• $3.26/mo., 24 cents a month: That's the amount that cable operators -- like Comcast, Charter and Time Warner -- pay respectively to ESPN and the Golf Channel. That's right, the networks -- good WSJ story here on how cable operators are stiffing the new NFL-owned network -- get paid for creating content and the distributors, who extract monthly fees from us the cable subscribers pay them. Just worth remembering when we consider the dismemberment of the news industry, which produces news and feature content and then merrily casts it into cyberspace, getting very little for it. As news publishers feed Yahoo and other search aggregator companies, it's a model worth considering. The world doesn't need to be completely ad-monetized. Content, especially content amassed and contracted centrally, could still get some fees from online networks that want it, with a bonus of ad rev shares as well.

• The Unreal O.C.: Think your newspaper has woes. According to Editor and Publisher:

Earlier this month, Editor Ken Brusic wrote in a memo to staff that revenue at the paper is down 14% compared to the year before. Profit is 38% behind the prior year.

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