Total revenues at McClatchy fell 6.4% from $365.3 million in the second quarter of 2009 to $342 million in the second quarter of 2010, due mostly to continued declines in advertising revenues, which slumped 8.2% from $283.7 million to $260.5 million over the same period.
Retail fell 10.7% to $133.5 million, national slipped 2% to $23.6 million, and classifieds slid 8.8% to $73.1 million. Circulation revenues also fell 2.4% to $67.7 million.
McClatchy Chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt found the positive side of the continuing declines, stating: "Advertising revenue trends continued to improve as we anticipated. Advertising revenues declined year-over-year by 8.2% compared to declines of 11.2% in the first quarter of 2010 and 20.5% in the fourth quarter of 2009.
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"We were also encouraged by the improving trends within the quarter: advertising revenues were down 10.2% in April, down 7.3% in May and down 6.4% in June." He added that "employment advertising, more than half of which is now online, was up 1.5% in May and 0.8% in June."
The McClatchy results follow a string of fairly weak earnings reports from other big newspaper publishers.
Earlier this week, A.H. Belo, which publishes The Dallas Morning News, said total revenues sank 4.7% to $121.6 million in the second quarter. At the New York Times Co., total ad revenues decreased 0.2% to $314.9 million. Gannett Co. reported that total revenues at its publishing division fell 6% to $1 billion in the second quarter of 2010, attributing this loss to a 5.7% drop in advertising revenues, to $692.2 million.