Consumers hate Web ads because they’re boring and annoying. Publishers hate them because they get cheaper every day. A group of Yahoo vets, funded by Forbes, thinks they have a solution: Really nice-looking slideshows.
Pumped up about the potential for e-books? So is Stephen King. Just as he was nine years ago. These digital revolutions always take time–just ask the music business, which sells a product that is already delivered in digital form yet derives just 20 percent of its revenue from digital products. So don’t plan on ripping down your bookshelves just yet.
No. But by buying “hundreds of millions” of dollars worth of preferred stock, the telecom magnate can give the paper some very expensive breathing room.
Like their colleagues at Time Inc., the editorial staff at Forbes has known that layoffs were coming to the company’s magazine and Web site for quite some time. But at least they’re getting it over with in one fell swoop: The company let go of 19 people today as it merged the two operations.
Here’s your obligatory scary stat for the day: The ad recession that’s responsible for so many layoffs has been in effect for two years, by one count, and will extend for at least another year in the U.S. That would mark the first three-year decline in ad spending since the Great Depression. And no matter how you count, we’re in for more layoff pain ahead.
If you had any romantic notion that the beginning of holiday season meant an end to media layoff season, think again. This looks to be a particularly bad few days at Time Inc., where many of the magazines that asked workers to quit last month will now be firing them instead. But there are cuts, or planned cuts, coming to all manner of media companies.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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