Stokes moves to bolster WA online news coverage as print revenues plunge
Kerry Stokes is to combine the resources of the West Australian and Yahoo!7 in a bid to provide a serious contender in online news for WA. The move was revealed in the half-year report from West Australian Newspaper Holdings, which was released this afternoon.
A combined editorial resource would potentially provide a significant challenge in Western Australia for News Ltd’s Perth Now and Fairfax Digital’s WA Today. According to data from Hitwise prepared for Mumbrella, Perth Now is top dog with 0.68% of internet visits. The West gets 0.42% and WA Today 0.29%.
The figures show that despite the downturn, Stokes now has control of a highly profitable asset. However, although the group, which Stokes took effective control of in December, posted a headline increase in profit of 32% to $58.5m, the detailed figures paint a more worrying picture for The West and for the wider Australian newspaper market.
Advertising and circulation revenue both fell by around 6% each, leading to an 8% drop in the newspaper’s profits. Advertising volume was down 8%, with jobs display ad revenue down an alarming 26.4%. Classifieds were down nearly 11%.
This could be quite interesting. It’s criminal that The West doesn’t dominate online. With News cutting back, and Fairfax not really getting it together in Perth, they’ve got a real chance.
Hello Anon
Perhaps you should study the facts a little closer – Fairfax now has the leading webiste in WA – it has overtaken the West’s – an amazing achievement in under a year!
Your figures sound interesting David. In November the UB figures for Fairfax’s WA site were not quite 70% of The West’s. Not to mention that when looking at actual users in WA Fairfax didn’t have half the numbers of The West… I think there’s still a bit of work to do before the aforementioned achievement can be claimed!
QUOTING: He predicted a full year profit of just over $100m “provided market conditions do not deteriorate further”
Ha ha ha – is he living under a rock? Naturally market conditions are going to deteriorate further. Clearly he’s not watching his own sensationalist news and current affair programs or reading his own newspaper who are both reporting on the impending financial crisis. That and the fact that his aging “newspaper readers” are literally dying off. I would say he should start counting on the certainty that profits will come down!
Looking like they are doing pretty well as far as I can see! Flaming on the blog responses… how old are you two up the top? LOL.
Interesting David … where are those figures from as according to Market Intelligence the figures are different
Perth Now – 599k
The West – 387k
WA Today – 348k
interestingly enough, 210k users of watoday also use SMH.com.au