Ad forecast revised down

Not only is Robert Coen pulling back on his initial advertising forecast for 2008, he's adjusting downward his final numbers for 2007. Coen, who is senior VP at Magna Global and a preeminent forecaster of advertising trends, now expects total ad spending - TV, newspaper, magazines, the works - to rise only 2 percent this year, down from his 3.7 percent predicted in December. That's bad enough, especially in a year that has the elections and an Olympics (traditionally big ad-generators). But the numbers are far worse in several categories. During the first quarter of 2008, spending on newspaper classified ads fell almost 25 percent and newspaper retail dropped almost 9 percent. Ad Age has the story.

The new numbers should offer at least a little perspective next to the recent wave of ill-informed commentaries about those villainous newspaper owners (most especially Tribune's Sam Zell). The ink-stained chest-thumping comes from the usual cast of old-codgers who insist that the news business isn't really like any other business. That is, profits should not be the main consideration. Marc Cooper, writing in the LAT's Dust Up section, spends all his space telling us what a greedy bastard Sam Zell is, which is no doubt true, but entirely misses the point about why Tribune is in such trouble. Hint: It has little to do with profit margins, which are a fairly irrelevant metric these days, certainly for Tribune. By the way, where were the chest-thumpers in 2007 when the Zell deal was taking shape and even Wall Street investors had their doubts? But don't get me started…

The woes of the news business get an airing today on Warren Olney's "To the Point" on KCRW (here's the link). The most entertaining guest was veteran reporter Lee Seigel, who obviously never worked a business desk in his career. He doesn't understand why "some of these newspaper people just strike" and "bring Sam Zell to his knees." Right.