Watch out if you’re depending on revenue from print media

If you generate a significant portion of licensing revenue from printed media. After the large number of closures and redundancies in 2009 the challenges for ‘traditional’ media don’t appear to be anywhere near resolved in 2010. Here are a few headlines from last week:

Time Out owner Tony Elliott must inject at least £3 million into the magazine to ensure it remains a “going concern”, annual accounts showed today. Time Out Group said it had to seek extra funding because “liabilites exceeded its total assets” by £10.7 million on 31 December 2008. Pre-tax losses more than doubled to almost £3.1 million in 2008, despite turnover rising 13.6 per cent to £29.2 million. Net debt, including loans and overdrafts, was £8.3 million. via Time Out needs £3m from owner to stay afloat | Business.

Meredith Corp. laid off 45 people in its Special Interest Media business Thursday as part of what it said was a move to refocus that division away from projects that consumers can’t immediately afford. Meredith said the company will cut production from 150 special interest issues in its fiscal year 2010 to 90 issues in 2011. via Meredith eliminates 45 positions in Special Interest publications | desmoinesregister.com | The Des Moines Register

Gary Wortel, the Star-Telegram’s president and publisher, announced Wednesday that the newspaper will reduce its staff by 28 employees and eliminate 17 open positions. “Although we’ve seen improvement in revenue trends recently, we still need to reduce our expenses going forward,” Wortel said. via Business briefs: Star-Telegram to reduce staff by 28 | Business | Star-Telegram.com

With redundancies and restructuring continuing in printed media those licensing content need to have their eyes firmly fixed on new opportunities in online media that will need large quantities of images, video and text for, new applications that are on the horizon. While the hope of industries is on the future some seem to give up print alltogeher:

Greg Hadfield announced his resignation as head of the Telegraph Media Group’s digital development in dramatic fashion yesterday. He stood up at the news rewired conference at City University to make a keynote speech, told a questioner that newspapers had no future and, as a consequence, he was leaving his job. via Roy Greenslade: Hadfield quits Telegraph, saying newspapers have no future | Media | guardian.co.uk

While his may be a bit of an overreaction it’s clear that 2 weeks into the new year the challenges remain and adapting to change rapidly and with an open attitiude will be key over the months to come.