The consolidation of the newspaper business continues. Gannett hasn’t given up on purchasing Tribune Co. as part of its ongoing expansion.
The money guys behind New Media Investment Group/GateHouse, Fortress Investment Group, remain in “buy” mode they can maximize the management fees they collect.
Prices have dropped for newspaper properties, making them more attractive targets. Companies like Gannett and New Media/GateHouse have centralized production facilities, so they can “gain efficiencies” with properties they acquire.
That is a nice way of saying “fire a lot of people to increase profits.”
The expressed New Media/GateHouse plan is to maximize cash flow at its properties, then use the money to pay dividends and to buy more properties, cut more costs, generate more cash flow, pay more dividends, buy more properties . . . you get the idea.
Revenues are sinking for newspaper properties and will continue to sink. New digital initiatives like New Media/GateHouse’s Propel Marketing generate some new revenues, but not nearly enough to offset all the decline.
And bleeding these properties for cash flow speeds causes newspaper and websites to deteriorate, which accelerates the loss of readers, advertisers and, of course, revenues.
CBNC commentator Kevin O’Leary noted the ongoing consolidation of newspaper companies will not solve the core problems.
“The best analogy is two smaller ice cubes melt faster than one bigger block of ice,” he said during a report on Gannett’s bid for the Tribune Co. “These are both melting.
“This is a just long end game of cutting costs, banging together all the ice you can, consolidating, slashing costs The long trend is to zero.”
He did not see the wisdom in Gannett’s bid. “This sounds like a business plan that is handed to you when you finally descend into hell and you know you have to live there in perpetuity,” O’Leary said. “Who would want this challenge? I mean, it is brutal.
“I’d like to have a moment of silence for the money that’s going to die in this project because it deserves that respect.”
What would an honest description of a consolidation plan sound like?
“Sometimes you have to say, ‘Look, it’s going to go to zero eventually. I am going to milk as much cash as I can out of it on the way by combining all the zero candidates together and put them on life support, try to make the refrigerator a little colder so the ice melts a little slower and suck out every dollar out before you turn out the lights.
“Listen, let’s tell the truth. That’s what’s going to happen.”
Here is what John Oliver has to state of the newspaper industry: