Ad Revenues off Just 9% in First Quarter

While cost cutting saved the day at the four of the five publicly traded newspaper companies that reported quarterly earnings last week, the real news is that ad revenue declines seem to be slowing -- we maybe can now see the bottom -- with the companies that have so far reported coming in at an average drop of about nine percent. Though we may not have seen the bottom yet on ad revenue declines -- while The New York Times Co. said in its conference call with analysts that it had actually seen a four-percent growth in ad revenue in March, The McClatchy Co. predicted another losing quarter for the second 13-week period -- it's clear that the bottom is not far off and that actual increases may be on the horizon (though probably not uniformly until the fourth quarter).