Time Layoffs: Another Death Knell For Print Media?

You can run, but you can’t hide from reality. And the longer you run, the quicker you realize that you are running off a cliff.

Today, more numbers reiterating the writing on the wall:

Hours spent with media per week, per IDC (via Alley Insider):

All media: 70.6 hours

Internet: 32.7 hours (46%)

Television: 16.4 hours (23%)

Magazines and Newspapers: 3.9 hours (0.05%)

I’ll be the first to admit that the IDC numbers might skew favorably to the Web, granted, but Magazines and Newspapers: 3.9 hours (0.05%) is terrifying to see if you are a print executive.

What’s more terrifying is that the Web isn’t even garnering 10% of total advertising spending yet (it gets 7-9%). Once it does, who will remain to buy print assets?

Right now, private equity bankers are showing up (as they did for Maxim, who, had I known was really on the market I would have made a run for myself
- with the help of my banker friends) because the absolute revenue
figures are big enough to merit paying the interest expense. But in a
higher rate environment, no private banker will be able to stomach the
underlying metrics… and over time, as the Internet garners more and
more of the absolute dollars in advertising, who knows, maybe print
will in fact die?