• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, May 6, 2008

Two mainstays of "traditional" media--newspapers and radio--are suffering steep revenue declines in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the same period last year. That's nothing new for newspapers, which have been slipping for a while--but it's ominous for radio, which until recently was managing to hold its own.

Most major newspaper publishers have already released their first-quarter results, and they are universally bad. Newspaper advertising revenue fell 10.6% at the New York Times Company, 15.3% at McClatchy, 11% at the Washington Post, 11.2% at Gannett, 5.7% at Lee Enterprises, 10% at E.W. Scripps, 12% at A.H. Belo and 19.1% at Media General.

The declines are the result of continuing losses in classifieds, historically the source of one-third to one-half of total newspaper revenues, which have been declining since 2004. Equally worrisome is a trend that is seeing declines in national and retail advertising. All three categories are falling because of competition from the Internet, which attracts advertisers with the promise of more precise measurement of ROI.

While newspapers' Internet revenues are growing, they still contribute only a small amount of total revenues--typically less than 10%.

Most of the major radio broadcasters are due to release first-quarter results over the next couple of weeks, and preliminary monthly figures compiled by the Radio Advertising Bureau suggest the news will be bad--although not quite as bad as newspapers.

According to the RAB, radio revenues fell 6% in January, 2% in February, and 8% in March. As radio's losses outpace even Wall Street's negative expectations, Marci Ryvicker, an analyst with Wachovia, expects revenue declines of 2% to 5% for most of the big broadcasters.

Like newspapers, the radio industry is scrambling to let advertisers know about its new digital offerings, such as Web radio and HD. The RAB recently restructured to better communicate these assets to advertisers, as did Katz Advantage, a radio sales rep firm owned by Clear Channel. There have also been a flurry of deals in the online space, including CBS Radio's content and ad partnership with Last.fm, which it bought last year.

However, as with newspapers, Internet-derived revenues remain a small piece of radio's overall business--about 2% of the total $21.3 billion in 2007.