A year after it cut back marginal print editions, Australia’s APN News & Media is reaping the benefits of a print-and-digital strategy.
In the hotly-contested pocket between Coffs Harbour – where it axed four paid editions last year – and the News Limited heartland of the Gold Coast, a focus on digital publishing has delivered bigger profits from a smaller business.
And the group has also clearly benefitted from reduced competition in the Sunshine Coast, from which News Limited withdrew in March.
As GXpress reported at the time, closure of the Noosa Journal and sister Journal titles by News’ Quest division saw pagination of rival APN products soar. The Domain-branded property section of APN’s Noosa News leaped to up to 160 heatset pages in the weeks following the closure, although a competitor has since emerged.
Although he did not name specific areas, chief executive Brett Chenowith said last week that APN’s real estate market share has increased in key regions despite a softening market.
At the same time, he said eight of its 14 key ARM regions were ahead year on local retail advertising and ten on motoring revenues. Results overall for the Australian Regional Media business are down, attributed to a slow-down in the Queensland mining industry and the decline of federal and state government advertising in the state. Apart from government advertising, ARM’s national advertising was ahead of the previous year, he says.
Weekday editions of the 123-year-old Tweed Daily News were cut last December, along with four paid editions of its Coffs Coast Advocate. Both papers were printed at a plant in Ballina, NSW.
APN says cost-cutting measures saved $25 million in 2012, and the company expects to match this saving next year.
Against a context of deteriorating publishing revenues – nine per cent overall in both Australia and New Zealand, where the Rugby World Cup contributed to 2011 profits – Chenowith says relaunching weekday editions of the New Zealand Herald as a tabloid in September was “positively received” by advertisers and readers.
Three other APN businesses, Australian Radio Network, Adshel and GrabOne have done significantly better, and “consistently outperformed the market” in a year of tough advertising markets.
Peter Coleman