When I started this blog, I predicted that my output would be light during the summertime.
Yes, I would like an audience, but no, I'm not going to turn my blog into a part-time job in order to have 100 loyal readers.
And not to my surprise, I haven't written much since I returned from Vegas in early May. I still intend to recap some of my adventures from that trip, and perhaps I will do so in August, as my regular summer routine will be disrupted thanks to surgery that I knew was coming at some point this year. I'd rather wait until winter, but I don't have a choice. Such is life.
While I will continue to write sporadically, my favorite daily resource for Vegas news, Vegas Chatter, will no longer be churning out content. The world learned of this earlier today.
Vegas Chatter shared information of interest to the tourist community, and plenty of it. Some of it came through sharing information reported by news sources, some of it came through press releases handed out to anyone willing to help promote a show, restaurant, resort or tourist trap. Some of it was little more than speculation based upon somebody's inside source. Some of it was simple firsthand experience, be it the recent chronicling of the final 24 hours of the Riviera or a review of a show or restaurant.
Vegas Chatter was a simple website. It provided information that was easy to access and search, and allowed for reader feedback on individual articles. There's a Facebook and Twitter account for the site, of course, and probably other social media resources I don't use. (I just looked at their page. They have a button for Foursquare. Foursquare! Who uses that in 2015?) But the website remained simple. Sure, there were ads on each page, but they weren't intrusive. I rarely noticed them.
I don't know much about running a website, but history shows us that news and information sites are not an easy proposition.
Presumably Vegas Chatter was paying its content creators for their time. Whether that compensation was generous or paltry (likely the latter), there needs to be revenue to pay those people. Unless the website is being funded as a public service by a very wealthy benefactor, it has to be difficult to sell enough advertising on a website to support it. Many "web only" news sites have failed to generate enough revenue, through advertising or other vehicles, to support the operation.
I'm not sure what the business model was for Vegas Chatter, but it appeared that advertising was the only form of revenue for the website. I didn't read the website much until a year or two ago, so perhaps there were other revenue generators affiliated with Vegas Chatter once upon a time. All I know is that the site hasn't offered me any sort of premium access or VIP member benefits for an annual fee, sold merchandise of any kind or tried to entice me to use its site to book my next vacation.
And today we learned that Vegas Chatter and its sister websites, under the ownership of media heavyweight Condé Nast, are being shuttered at the end of this month. Given what I just detailed, this shouldn't come as a surprise. There appears to be a healthy amount of daily web traffic to the Vegas Chatter site, but traffic doesn't simply translate to dollars.
The forthcoming Vegas Chatter shuttering is nothing new. The Internet's history is littered with stories of websites that were built – sometimes as nothing more than a labor of love – into a successful entity, one that became too desirable for a well-funded corporation to ignore.
It's now being spun off as an independent company, but Paypal has long been part of the eBay portfolio. And why is that? Somebody was smart enough to figure out how to offer secure, instant online auction payments, which buyers and sellers appreciated. Seeing that success, eBay attempted to create its own rival platform, but Paypal was already entrenched in the eBay culture. So eBay bought Paypal and integrated it into its auction platform, eventually making it the mandatory platform for buyers and sellers of eBay's auctions.
I'm less familiar with the story of Cheapo Vegas, but from what I've understood, the website was started as a labor of love, providing useful information about what Vegas casinos and hotels did and didn't offer. And if you wanted to know where to find cheap eats, the site was good for that, too. It seemed to be a popular site that was well regarded in the online community.
With a loyal audience, Cheapo Vegas was purchased by an ownership that wanted to monetize it by encouraging you to book your Vegas vacation plans through the website. The name was the same, the mascot of the website remains in place, but the website's sensibility and charm has been lost. The site is still active today, but its Facebook and Twitter accounts have been inactive for about four months, and the website's blog has seen little activity in those past four months, giving what remaining fans the website has little reason to visit it. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cheapo Vegas disappear from the online landscape in the next two years.
Blogs are a classic example of labors of love. I have been a longtime reader of The Vegas Solo, a blog that has provided a wealth of information to Vegas visitors, solo or otherwise. It's clearly not a cash cow, there's barely a trace of advertising to be found on the site. Perhaps the financial benefit comes in the form of a tax write off for each trip to Vegas, during which content is gathered for the blog. Regardless, after years of providing weekly content, its creator scaled back her production, and I'm guessing that blogging about her love of Vegas became more labor than she cared for.
Ten years ago newspapers were struggling with the question of how to provide their content online while still reaping the benefits of the printed product. Newspapers don't make money off of subscriptions and single-copy sales, that money just reduces the costs of circulation, printing and delivery. The money is made via ad sales, and the ad sales for printed newspapers have spiraled down the toilet during the past 15 years or so. Newspapers continue to struggle with how to remain viable when so much of their ad revenue has been lost, forever, to the Internet. Charging for access to the content, as more newspapers are attempting to do, doesn't solve the problem.
Is it any surprise that information-heavy websites such as Vegas Chatter are not financially viable businesses for the Condé Nasts of the world? Not at all.
Today's Vegas Chatter announcement is another sad reminder of that.
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newspapers. Show all posts
Monday, July 27, 2015
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
The Vegas future most of us never think about
Vegas visitors love to know what the latest development is at their favorite casinos.
Is there a new restaurant? Is there a new off-the-menu special at the 24-hour cafe? Is there a new show in the casino's theater? Is there a new club charging obscene amounts for the privilege of consuming alcohol while enjoying the thumping beats of an overpaid DJ?
And how do we find out most of this information when we live outside of Nevada? Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet.
My first trip to Vegas was in January 1997. I arrived in town 363 days before I would acquire my first cellphone. There was an Internet back then, but it was in its infancy. Most of us never dreamed we'd soon be perusing countless websites looking for the best Vegas deals and tips for our upcoming trip.
That was 18 years ago, which is not exactly a lifetime ago for most of us.
Back in 1997 it wasn't easy to access news and information about Vegas. Prior to my first trip, a co-worker brought back one or two of the tourist magazines from her trip. I don't remember two things about those magazines. I remember but one thing. An ad for a hair salon called "A Little Off the Top," promising haircuts from women in lingerie. No, I didn't go, but the concept struck me as hilarious. (It's long gone, I am certain, but this webpage would lead you to believe it still exists. Perhaps it has been reincarnated. A LITTLE OFF THE TOP. And yes, I'm aware a similar concept was tried inside the Plaza. I think it failed, too.)
We take for granted the fact that we can access all sorts of information, all the time, through an Internet connection. It wasn't always that easy.
Once upon a time we relied upon newspapers to deliver all sorts of information. My family never purchased TV Guide magazine, but the free TV guide in our Sunday newspaper found its way to the television every single week. Several years ago my Sunday paper stopped including the publication as part of your Sunday paper purchase, although it started selling a version of it, delivered with your Sunday paper. I can't tell you the last time I relied upon a newspaper for TV listings.
Newspapers have a harder time finding readers to pick up copies of their ink-stained pulp these days. My buddy commutes to work via the choo-choo train every weekday, and he reads a book. An old-fashioned book. Most people on the train opt for their cellphone or electronic tablet to occupy their time, he said. It's unusual to see somebody reading a newspaper, he noted.
The decline in readership of printed newspapers has had a chilling effect on our traditional news sources. That's not a secret. Newspapers don't make money off of the sale of single copies. That Sunday revenue is a nice drop in the bucket, but newspapers have long relied upon the advertising dollars to rake in the big bucks.
Twenty years ago my Sunday newspaper carried multiple sections of classified advertisements, and that was just the "help wanted" ads. There were many significant, colorful ads from car dealerships and real estate agencies, too. Today there's a fraction of those ads. That's millions, upon millions, of dollars that has been lost, and it's never coming back.
Newspapers serve the public good, but they're not government agencies or nonprofit organizations, for the most part. They're no different than the grocery stores, liquor stores, bars and casinos across Vegas. They exist to make money for those who invest in the infrastructure necessary to print them. As profits have fallen off the past 15 years, companies have tried to find ways to recapture the lost advertising revenue, and have reduced staffing in the non-revenue editorial department in order to hang onto an ounce of profitability.
Newspapers need to make a profit. Nobody invests millions of dollars into a newspaper operation in order to break even. And profitability is necessary in order to finance capital investments that ensure a newspaper's long-term viability.
I'm no financial wizard, but the recent news that the Las Vegas Review-Journal's parent company is being sold didn't exactly instill confidence in me that there's a long-term future for newspapers as we know them.
I've seen differing estimates of the population of the greater Vegas area, and I was disappointed to read in the sale of the Review-Journal that its Sunday circulation is 184,000. That seems low to me. Perhaps it's a decent Sunday circulation, but I would have bet the circulation was more than 200,000.
The article notes that the newspaper's Web site receives 10.5 million page views per month. That sounds like a lot, but one person could be responsible for 10 page views per day, multiple times per month. And plenty of those page views are going to be brief scans of headlines, and plenty of them will be by readers far from the Vegas strip. That's an important distinction.
Millions of monthly page views sounds impressive, but if the page views are free, you're not making money off of the newspaper's content. The solution is to sell advertising on the Web site, of course. As I noted, I'm no business genius, but I do know one thing, the revenue garnered by online ads is a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue generated by ads in the paper and inserts from local grocery and department stores in the Sunday paper.
There was a time when Blockbuster was a huge national chain, renting thousands of movies per day across the country. As DVDs became the dominant format for movies, Blockbuster adapted. Netflix came along and challenged Blockbuster, using a different business model. It worked, to a point, but Netflix didn't blow up until its streaming video service became a prominent part of its business model. Blockbuster never quite made the transition. The company attempted to diversify by offering a rental model similar to Netflix, and eventually it tried its hand at streaming video, but it was too little, too late. Consumers had moved on and Blockbuster ultimately went bankrupt. Today there's a few independent locations still in business across the country, reportedly, but the company is otherwise a footnote in retail history.
Just as there were video rental stores dotting the landscape of America 18 years ago, you could find pay phones in every bar, restaurant, movie theater and shopping mall. There are still pay phones, but they don't dot the urban landscape like they use to. A couple of years ago I was stunned to see a couple of them tucked away in an unusual location inside Mall of America. They use to be all over the mall.
Times change, and some industries are destined to die due to advances in technology or changing consumer preferences. Newspapers are not immune to that.
Several years ago it seemed like major newspapers were dropping like flies. The plague seemed to come to an end, but we've rapidly advanced as a society, to the point where many of us are carrying around micro-computers in our pockets. We no longer need a computer to read articles from the daily paper, we can do it on the city bus, and we don't need a wi-fi connection to do it.
The Review-Journal and it sister publications, seven other daily newspapers and 65 weekly publications in seven states, were sold for $102.5 million. I have no idea if the previous ownership was up to its eyeballs in debt or what kind of infrastructure is included in the sale. All I do know is that the sale price for all those publications seems extremely low. That suggests to me that most of them are not very profitable. And there's no reason to think their revenue is going to grow exponentially in the coming years.
Perhaps a bare bones version of the might newspaper will survive in major cities across the country. I'm skeptical. As profits dwindle there will be fewer buyers looking to invest in a dying industry. And the sale of the Review-Journal affirms my opinion.
And don't kid yourself, newspapers won't simply cease printing newspapers and switch to an online-only entity. If you want comprehensive crime, political, education and environmental reporting in a major metropolitan area, you need a substantial staff to produce it. Without a significant revenue stream to cover that cost, an online media outlet will provide a fraction of what daily newspapers are providing today.
Most Vegas tourists aren't concerned about the long-term viability of a daily newspaper in Vegas, and that's understandable. But newspapers have played an important role in their communities for generations. We'll survive without them, but our community won't be better without them.
Is there a new restaurant? Is there a new off-the-menu special at the 24-hour cafe? Is there a new show in the casino's theater? Is there a new club charging obscene amounts for the privilege of consuming alcohol while enjoying the thumping beats of an overpaid DJ?
And how do we find out most of this information when we live outside of Nevada? Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the Internet.
My first trip to Vegas was in January 1997. I arrived in town 363 days before I would acquire my first cellphone. There was an Internet back then, but it was in its infancy. Most of us never dreamed we'd soon be perusing countless websites looking for the best Vegas deals and tips for our upcoming trip.
That was 18 years ago, which is not exactly a lifetime ago for most of us.
Back in 1997 it wasn't easy to access news and information about Vegas. Prior to my first trip, a co-worker brought back one or two of the tourist magazines from her trip. I don't remember two things about those magazines. I remember but one thing. An ad for a hair salon called "A Little Off the Top," promising haircuts from women in lingerie. No, I didn't go, but the concept struck me as hilarious. (It's long gone, I am certain, but this webpage would lead you to believe it still exists. Perhaps it has been reincarnated. A LITTLE OFF THE TOP. And yes, I'm aware a similar concept was tried inside the Plaza. I think it failed, too.)
We take for granted the fact that we can access all sorts of information, all the time, through an Internet connection. It wasn't always that easy.
Once upon a time we relied upon newspapers to deliver all sorts of information. My family never purchased TV Guide magazine, but the free TV guide in our Sunday newspaper found its way to the television every single week. Several years ago my Sunday paper stopped including the publication as part of your Sunday paper purchase, although it started selling a version of it, delivered with your Sunday paper. I can't tell you the last time I relied upon a newspaper for TV listings.
Newspapers have a harder time finding readers to pick up copies of their ink-stained pulp these days. My buddy commutes to work via the choo-choo train every weekday, and he reads a book. An old-fashioned book. Most people on the train opt for their cellphone or electronic tablet to occupy their time, he said. It's unusual to see somebody reading a newspaper, he noted.
The decline in readership of printed newspapers has had a chilling effect on our traditional news sources. That's not a secret. Newspapers don't make money off of the sale of single copies. That Sunday revenue is a nice drop in the bucket, but newspapers have long relied upon the advertising dollars to rake in the big bucks.
Twenty years ago my Sunday newspaper carried multiple sections of classified advertisements, and that was just the "help wanted" ads. There were many significant, colorful ads from car dealerships and real estate agencies, too. Today there's a fraction of those ads. That's millions, upon millions, of dollars that has been lost, and it's never coming back.
Newspapers serve the public good, but they're not government agencies or nonprofit organizations, for the most part. They're no different than the grocery stores, liquor stores, bars and casinos across Vegas. They exist to make money for those who invest in the infrastructure necessary to print them. As profits have fallen off the past 15 years, companies have tried to find ways to recapture the lost advertising revenue, and have reduced staffing in the non-revenue editorial department in order to hang onto an ounce of profitability.
Newspapers need to make a profit. Nobody invests millions of dollars into a newspaper operation in order to break even. And profitability is necessary in order to finance capital investments that ensure a newspaper's long-term viability.
I'm no financial wizard, but the recent news that the Las Vegas Review-Journal's parent company is being sold didn't exactly instill confidence in me that there's a long-term future for newspapers as we know them.
I've seen differing estimates of the population of the greater Vegas area, and I was disappointed to read in the sale of the Review-Journal that its Sunday circulation is 184,000. That seems low to me. Perhaps it's a decent Sunday circulation, but I would have bet the circulation was more than 200,000.
The article notes that the newspaper's Web site receives 10.5 million page views per month. That sounds like a lot, but one person could be responsible for 10 page views per day, multiple times per month. And plenty of those page views are going to be brief scans of headlines, and plenty of them will be by readers far from the Vegas strip. That's an important distinction.
Millions of monthly page views sounds impressive, but if the page views are free, you're not making money off of the newspaper's content. The solution is to sell advertising on the Web site, of course. As I noted, I'm no business genius, but I do know one thing, the revenue garnered by online ads is a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue generated by ads in the paper and inserts from local grocery and department stores in the Sunday paper.
There was a time when Blockbuster was a huge national chain, renting thousands of movies per day across the country. As DVDs became the dominant format for movies, Blockbuster adapted. Netflix came along and challenged Blockbuster, using a different business model. It worked, to a point, but Netflix didn't blow up until its streaming video service became a prominent part of its business model. Blockbuster never quite made the transition. The company attempted to diversify by offering a rental model similar to Netflix, and eventually it tried its hand at streaming video, but it was too little, too late. Consumers had moved on and Blockbuster ultimately went bankrupt. Today there's a few independent locations still in business across the country, reportedly, but the company is otherwise a footnote in retail history.
Just as there were video rental stores dotting the landscape of America 18 years ago, you could find pay phones in every bar, restaurant, movie theater and shopping mall. There are still pay phones, but they don't dot the urban landscape like they use to. A couple of years ago I was stunned to see a couple of them tucked away in an unusual location inside Mall of America. They use to be all over the mall.
Times change, and some industries are destined to die due to advances in technology or changing consumer preferences. Newspapers are not immune to that.
Several years ago it seemed like major newspapers were dropping like flies. The plague seemed to come to an end, but we've rapidly advanced as a society, to the point where many of us are carrying around micro-computers in our pockets. We no longer need a computer to read articles from the daily paper, we can do it on the city bus, and we don't need a wi-fi connection to do it.
The Review-Journal and it sister publications, seven other daily newspapers and 65 weekly publications in seven states, were sold for $102.5 million. I have no idea if the previous ownership was up to its eyeballs in debt or what kind of infrastructure is included in the sale. All I do know is that the sale price for all those publications seems extremely low. That suggests to me that most of them are not very profitable. And there's no reason to think their revenue is going to grow exponentially in the coming years.
Perhaps a bare bones version of the might newspaper will survive in major cities across the country. I'm skeptical. As profits dwindle there will be fewer buyers looking to invest in a dying industry. And the sale of the Review-Journal affirms my opinion.
And don't kid yourself, newspapers won't simply cease printing newspapers and switch to an online-only entity. If you want comprehensive crime, political, education and environmental reporting in a major metropolitan area, you need a substantial staff to produce it. Without a significant revenue stream to cover that cost, an online media outlet will provide a fraction of what daily newspapers are providing today.
Most Vegas tourists aren't concerned about the long-term viability of a daily newspaper in Vegas, and that's understandable. But newspapers have played an important role in their communities for generations. We'll survive without them, but our community won't be better without them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)