WaPo News and Mag Divisions Report Massive Losses; Revenue Plummets
You may have noticed some very glowing stories this morning about the Washington Post Company! The AP says: “Washington Post Co. quadruples 4Q profit”! That is true! Now, this is a company with many different arms. Two of the wings, the cable TV stations and the Kaplan education services, provide fully 75% of the company’s income. But what about the newspapers and magazines, you ask, from which the company takes its name? Well they are in the toilet, actually, and had a very bad year.
The newspaper division’s annual loss was actually 15% less than last year-even while 2009’s revenues were down 15% from last year. So this year, they had an operating loss of only $163 million-while for 2008 that loss was almost $193 million. (Last year: terrible. This year: bad.)
The company’s magazine arm, however, had a significant downturn. That division “had an operating loss in 2009 of $29.3 million, compared to an operating loss of $16.1 million in 2008.” So revenues for magazines there were down 27% over last year.
There was a similar decrease in their profitable television division, even! Revenue for that department was down 16% in 2009 from 2008, though it had an operating profit.
So let’s look at some recent history!
The operating income of the newspaper division in 2005: $125,359,000
The operating income of the newspaper division in 2006 $63,389,000.
That’s a decline of almost 50% between 2005 and 2006.
In 2007, however, they held pretty much steady with operating income of $66,434,000.
So you can imagine that their operating loss in 2008 of $193 million was stunning.
Let’s look back at the trending of the newspaper division’s yearly pure revenue, setting aside the final income numbers:
2003: $872,754,000
2004: $938,066,000
2005: $957,082,000
2006: 961,905,000
2007: $889,827,000
2008: $801,265,000
2009: $679,282,000
So revenue began trending down from a 2006 high and then, in 2009, massively sagged. I don’t really need to graph that for you, do I?