In a recent presentation I told the audience that they had quit printing newspapers in Detroit during the week. The audience said they weren't surprised, and didn't much care. The other day I asked a room full of college students when the last time was they looked at a newspaper (not read, just looked) – and not a single person could remember the last time. In Houston I asked two groups for the headline of the day that morning – not a single person had looked at the newspaper, and none in the group subscribed to a newspaper. Even my wife, who used to demand a Wednesday newspaper so she could receive the grocery ads, asked me why we bother to subscribe any more because she now gets the ads in the mail. This wholly unscientific representation was pretty clear. People simply don't care much about newspapers any more.
So, if you had $100 bucks to invest, and you had the following options, would you invest it in
- A professional baseball team (like the Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs)?
- A manhattan skyscraper?
- A newspaper?
That is exactly the question which is facing the New York Times Company (see chart here), and their decision is to invest in a newspaper. In fact, they are selling their interest in the Boston Red Sox and 19 floors in their Manhattan headquarters so they can prop up the newspaper business which saw ad revenue declines of greater than 16% – and classified ad declines of a whopping 29% (read article here). (Classified ads are for cars, lawn mowers, and jobs – you know, the things you now go to find on Craigslist.com, ebay.com, vehix.com and Monster.com and aren't likely to ever spend money on with a newspaper.)
The value of New York Times Company has dropped 90% in the last 5 years – from $50 to $5. The decline in advertising is not a new phenomenon, nor is it related to the financial crisis. People simply quit reading newspapers several years ago, and that trend has continued. Simultaneously, competition for ads grew tremendously – such as the classified ads described above. Corporate advertisers discovered they could reach a lot more readers a lot cheaper if they put ads on the internet using services from Google and Yahoo! There was no surprise in the demise of the newspaper business.
At NYT, the smart thing to do would be to sell, or maybe close, the newspaper and maximize the value of investments in About.com and other web projects (which today are only 12% of revenue) as well as Boston Sports (owner of the Red Sox) and hang on to that Manhattan property until real estate turns around in 5 years (more or less). Why sell the most valuable things you own, and put the money into a product that has seen double-digit demand and revenue declines for several years?
Of course, Tribune Company isn't showing any greater business intelligence. Management borrowed far, far more than the newspaper is worth 2 years ago through an employee stock ownership plan (can you understand "good-bye pension"?). So last week they sold the Chicago Cubs. For $900million. Tribune bought the Cubs, including Wrigley Field, 28 years ago for $20million. That's a 14.5% annualized rate of return for 28 consecutive years. Not even Peter Lynch, the famed mutual fund manager, can claim that kind of record!
Through adroit management and good marketing, they modernized the Wrigley Field assets and the Cubs team – and without ever winning the World Series drove the value straight up. As fast as people quit reading the Chicago Tribune newspaper they went to Cubs games. Who cares if the team doesn't win, there's always next year. And unlike newspapers, there aren't going to be any more professional baseball teams in Chicago (there are already two for those who don't know - Chicago's White Sox won the World Series in 2005). And they aren't building any additional arenas in downtown Chicago to compete with Wrigley Field. Here's a business with monopoly-like characteristics and unlimited value creation potential. But management sold it in order to pay off the debt they took on to take the newspaper private.
Defending the original business gets Locked-in at companies. Long after its value has declined, uneconomic decisions are made to try keeping it alive. Smart competitors don't sell good assets to invest in bad businesses. They follow the capitalistic system and direct investments where their value can grow. The New York Times may be a good newspaper – but who cares if people would rather get their news from TV and the internet – and they don't read newspapers "for fun?" When people don't read, and advertisers can get better return from media vehicles that don't have the printing and distribution costs of newspapers, what difference does it make if the outdated product is "good?" If you think the New York Times Company is cheap at $5.00 a share, you'll think it's really cheap in bankruptcy court. Just ask the employee shareholders at Tribune Company.