• New York Times, Monday, August 11, 2008 9:30 AM

The flight of advertising dollars to the Internet is only one source of the pain felt by traditional media outlets. Another increasingly important culprit is the decline in ad revenue from auto advertising.

In the first quarter, the auto industry spent $414 million less on advertising than in last year's first quarter, per TNS. Newspapers lost $131 million in auto advertising, largely from local dealerships having trouble moving cars off their lots.

But the pain goes beyond local car dealerships ads. In the latest round of earnings reports from Viacom, Time Warner and other major media companies, executives said the downturn in the auto industry was a reason for lagging revenue at their cable networks and magazines.

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