As it enters its second year as a daily newspaper, The New York Sun is aiming to turn a straphanger niche into financial success by emphasizing how its readers love it. "People who read this paper spend 30% more time with it than with the traditional newspaper, yet it's one-half the size," said Chief Operating Officer William Kummel. "It's the equivalent of a TV buyer buying a 15-second ad and getting a minute." The Sun has also begun a new $800,000 ad campaign, using the tagline "Expect a Different Point of View," produced by Leapfrog Advertising. The buy is a mix of TV, radio and outdoor ads, including taxi-toppers and buses. The Sun got some bargains on the broadcast side of the buy after other advertisers cancelled during the Iraq War, said Kummel. The paper currently publishes 18-20 pages per day, he said, and costs just 25 cents per issue. The circulation of 30,500 is 70% ahead of where it was at launch. About 75% of those papers are bought at newsstands, and the heart of the circulation territory is the Upper East and Upper West sides of Manhattan. It's a well-educated audience, since "47% of our audience went to graduate school and 82% graduated from college," Kummel said, based on research done for the paper last year. "The research we have done to date has focused on how the consumers reacted to the product as a whole, both those who read it and those who don't. The research has focused on how people take the paper, and what they're looking for." Retailers are at the heart of the advertising mix, said Display Advertising Director Allyson Nemeroff, just as it is in most local newspapers. "The message is we're an affordable way for advertisers to reach an upscale, well-educated New York audience," she said. "Another category that's strong is our arts and letters section," she said, where The Sun offers reviews that start on the front page. "We recently had the Museum of National History and the Frick Museum" launch ad campaigns in The Sun, she said. The paper's offices, on the second floor of a building at Chambers and Church Streets in lower Manhattan, are just one block west of where the 19th century paper of the same name, owned by Charles A. Dana, had its offices. Kummel said the new paper hopes to raise circulation another 20,000 this year, and increase the percentage of papers that are delivered by carriers. "We've expanded the home delivery footprint to New Jersey, to Fairfield and Westchester, increased Brooklyn and Queens, and provided it in Staten Island," he said. The Sun is also selling online subscriptions, at the same $1.25 per week price as on the newsstand, with readers getting to choose either a text-based version or one that looks just like the regular paper. "At our launch we had a remarkable number of people asking to subscribe from outside our home delivery area," he said. "Mailing means you don't get it that day. By going to an electronic edition of the paper, it looks just like the regular paper. "Many people around the world think of themselves as New Yorkers. This is a way to serve the same audience, for $1.25 per week, and enjoy the same product."
It's not just about the weather anymore. The Weather Channel, that 20-year fixture on cable that has specialized in local forecasts every eight minutes, has been expanding its programming to include a weather-themed magazine show, several lifestyle vignettes sprinkled throughout the daypart, and for the past four months, a weekday documentary that features video of the world's biggest storms and how people survived them. And while the magazine show isn't going to survive the year, the vignettes will be infused with new features and the new show, Storm Stories, will inhabit the 8-9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific program block on The Weather Channel. Patrick Scott, president of The Weather Channel, said that these initiatives and others are designed to increase the network's share in primetime. It's already got a high share- averaging a 0.35 rating and a 1 share - during the morning when its signature weather-shows, Your Weather Today and Weekend Now, air. There's a higher reach in the evening (60% cume) but the length of time isn't as long and Scott said The Weather Channel wanted to change that. Along with an in-depth look at national and local weather developments called Evening Edition, The Weather Channel also has experimented with long-form programming in the primetime block. One of the earliest, StormWeek, was a weeklong blitz of storm-related documentaries that run in April and October. It remains on the schedule. That led in 2000 to Atmospheres, a magazine-style show that featured stories about the weather and how it affects business, industry, leisure pursuits and lifestyles. Scott said Atmospheres "didn't move the needle" and was moved to weekends. But research discovered that one part of Atmospheres' approach - the stories of people caught in deadly storms and how they're rescued - tested well and sparked Storm Stories. That hour-long show, narrated by Atmospheres co-host and meteorologist Jim Cantore, premiered Jan. 3 from 8-9 p.m. weekdays. That's done so well The Weather Channel has plans to expand Storm Stories to seven days a week in October. Atmospheres would go off the air in the expansion. That 8-9 p.m. block will be supplemented by other projects, including the twice-yearly StormWeek (which Scott said would be revamped in October) and a new program, Forecast Earth, produced in association with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A five-part series on El Nino - the first in The Weather Channel-NOAA partnership - will run beginning tonight. Three other 30-minute Forecast Earth documentaries will run later this year, focusing on coastal storms, the science of forecasting storms and a NOAA satellite that monitors global environmental conditions. There are plans for more specials but nothing has been decided, Scott said. Scott said that despite the specials, The Weather Channel's mission of providing weather information hasn't and won't change. Breaking weather coverage will always pre-empt the programming block. On Storm Stories and other documentaries, The Weather Channel has redesigned the screen with the lower third layout that has enriched local information so that viewers will always get the local forecast. "We're never going to go away from the franchise," Scott said. The short-form vignettes sprinkled throughout the daypart include features on travel, medicine, gardening and home. At next week's upfront, the network is announcing a new vignette with the working title "Road Show." That program, which will start sometime in the fourth quarter, stands on its head one of The Weather Channel's primary appeals - coverage of bad weather. "Bad weather is serious but good weather is fun. We're going down that road as well with a light-hearted look at a good weather, a kind of 'Weather Unplugged,'" Scott said. Live and taped segments would focus on the fun side of weather and locales with pleasant or extraordinary conditions. It's not the first upfront The Weather Channel has held, although it will break new ground in terms of approach. Scott said previous upfronts had centered on the trust and safety attributes of the channel, which boasts one of the highest scores on brand attributes in the cable universe. "This upfront we have next week is gong to be the first one that majors on the programming," Scott said. The Weather Channel will also road test its new slogan, which builds upon the "Live By It" theme that it had been using in past years. The new slogan: "It's not about the weather. It's about life." Scott said that The Weather Channel is much more than just the forecast. "It's about how the weather affects you, it's about where you are, where you go," he said.
A new study conducted by a television industry organization finds that American consumers not only expect but encourage advertisers to remain on course during war or the threat of terrorism. In a sign that Americans have at least learned to live in a turbulent world, only 18% of the 413 people surveyed nationwide by Frank N. Magid Associates said they weren't accustomed to the changes the U.S. has seen since 9/11. Online research director Michael Antecol said Americans have become more resilient since the terrorist attacks and have also remained interested in what's going on in the world. Sixty-two percent said they were "very interested" in the war in Iraq and 73% said they were watching TV as their primary means of catching up on the news. "There's no wear-out in terms of the desire for war coverage," said Antecol. A majority - 79% - don't see a problem with ads during TV news programs that have significant war coverage and won't penalize a company that does so. Only 6% would avoid companies that advertise. The study was commissioned by the New York-based Television Bureau of Advertising. Sixty-six percent of people surveyed believed advertising was necessary to keep the economy moving, war or not, and 70% felt that ads are a normal part of television, even during wartime, and they expected to see them. Those disagreeing were 21% and 24%, respectively. Majorities also felt that companies sponsoring news programs were performing a public service and that it was appropriate to advertise during the current war. As for the ads that run, 63% said they looked favorably upon ads that showed support for the armed forces or a patriotic theme but an almost equal number said advertisers should steer clear of politics during wartime. Antecol said a good yardstick was the 18-month recall rates of the "Keep America Rolling" campaign, which was started by General Motors shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Forty-three percent of those surveyed recalled the campaign and of those, 88% had a positive reaction to it. In a side part of the study, Antecol said that the war has caused almost no delay in consumer spending behavior, with 89% saying that the war hadn't caused them to cancel or delay planned purchases. He pointed to evidence of pent-up consumer demand as the war winds down, with 48% of people more likely to schedule a vacation afterward and about 30% ready to buy furniture, computers or a major appliance.
I just finished doing my taxes -- my 2001 taxes. But, as implied in the old CB-radio sign off (Ten-four, good buddy), it won't be the last I see of them. The year 2001, which was a "difficult" year for my finances, will be with me for a long time in carryovers and carrybacks. My annual taxes are like a desktop mirror I get to hold up to the national economy that perfectly tracks the tenor of the times. But, it's a distortion mirror like the one in the circus fun house. Because I'm engaged in starting up businesses in the advertising industry, small changes in the national economy get doubly distorted by the time they reach my 1040. Ad budgets of consumer and business marketers always swing more than the general economic changes. And the fortunes of businesses that serve the advertising industry swing even more wildly, with the expected effect on personal financial statements. I always lose money when the economy is weak and the advertising business tumbles and usually make decent money after it has been strong for a while and the ad business takes off. My taxes are of the complicated variety. And for some foolish reason, I decided some time ago to do them myself. After all, I'm a graduate of business school with a degree in finance. I thought I had enough time on my hands. Why should someone else get paid to do them when I can easily handle them myself? You may be wondering why I'm so late in filing taxes from 2 years ago. Turns out, it's all much more complicated and time consuming than I thought. My 2001 return was 39 pages long and really not all that easy to do. Meanwhile, the spare time I thought I had seems to have evaporated. Without tax preparation software, it would have been absolutely impossible to do the job on my own. Even with such help, the rules and regulations that govern any return that involves more than just W-2 earnings are almost impenetrable. I'm for tax simplification in a big way now. However, the trouble with the simplification schemes that have been developed over the years is they seem to mainly cut the taxes of the wealthy while increasing those of lower income groups. All of the wealthy have complicated tax returns. (But, not all complicated returns are from the wealthy. See paragraph one.) Steve Forbes, when he was running for President a half dozen years ago, was not clever or bold enough to just say, "Let's cut taxes for the most well off 10% of Americans," as George Bush has. Forbes's tax simplification plan never gained him any traction. But calling your program "tax cuts" gives it a much better chance of enactment. Even though Bush's tax cut is unpopular with the general public, he's probably going to get most of what he wants, because the Congress is afraid to stand up to a President who has waged and won a popular war. Will Bush's plan help the advertising industry? Maybe yes, maybe no. As far as I can tell, the only economic stimulus in the plan is based on the theory that it will make the wealthy so happy and give them so much extra money that they will start buying stocks again, particularly those stocks with the newly tax free dividends. That will, so the reasoning goes, cause stock prices to be bid up rapidly so that we will all become fooled into believing the economy will soon be good again. Therefore, businesses will invest a lot of money in new plant and equipment in order to meet the rising demand levels they will begin to believe are right around the corner after the average working American becomes pumped up with new found confidence by having seen all those happy and wealthy Wall Street types on CNN. I'm not betting on the above scenario. But, I actually do believe the country is ready for a return to growth and that the expansion has already begun. So does Alan Greenspan, which is more important than what George Bush or 535 Congressmen or I believe, anyhow. So, don't pay any attention to that debate going on in Washington. It doesn't matter what they do. Whichever way the Washington follies come out, there will not be much of a noticeable impact on our business. But we can help ourselves. The recovery has already started. Now that the war is over, let's release those pent-up budgets and get back to work on building a better future. After all, I am going to need some income soon so I don't lose the tax shelter benefit from those tax loss carryforwards.