• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 4, 2011

The third quarter brought no good news for the newspaper business, as reflected in another round of poor results from major publishers. That includes the Washington Post Co., which saw total revenues decline 13% from $1.18 billion in the third quarter of 2010 to $1.03 billion in the same period of this year. The decline was attributed to losses at the newspaper and broadcast TV divisions, also extending to the company's education division, where its Kaplan property has been hit hard by new regulations on student loans.

Newspaper publishing division revenue in the third quarter came to $149.3 million, down 9% from $163.4 million in the third quarter of 2010. Print ad revenues at The Washington Post tumbled 20% to $57.6 million, due to declines in classifieds, zoned, and general advertising. On a rather ominous note, online ad revenues also declined 14% from $27 million to $23.3 million, due in part to a 17% drop in online display ad revenue and a 5% drop in online classified ad revenues.

WaPo's cable television division saw revenue decline slightly from $188.7 million to $187.9 million. Meanwhile, revenue at the company’s broadcast TV division declined 11% from $83.2 million to $73.8 million, due mostly to the absence of Olympics-related and political advertising, which boosted revenues in 2010.

Finally, revenues at the company's once-lucrative education division fell 16% from $737.1 million to $615.9 million.

In recent years, Kaplan (acquired in 1984) had become the mainstay of WaPo's financial well-being: in 2010, the education division contributed $2.9 billion or 62% of a total $4.7 billion in revenues for the company. However, in the wake of the credit collapse that began in 2008, Congress has moved to tighten restrictions on how government student loans can be spent -- specifically targeting private, for-profit test prep services like Kaplan. The result has been a sharp decrease in the number of students paying for test prep services with federal loans.