“We are not immune to the challenges” that the magazine industry has faced, wrote Los Angeles Times President Kathy K. Thomson in yesterday’s paper. So the paper has “made the decision that LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine [LATM] will publish its final issue on June 3rd.
FishbowlLA spoke with the mag’s editor, Nancie Clare, who said “It’s fair to say there were revenue issues…I don’t think they got rid of us because they don’t like us.” The mangazine’s lean staff of seven will be let go, with little likelihood they will be absorbed by the newspaper proper. Clare observed “They’re contracting in the newsroom too. There’s nowhere to absorb us.”
The magazine has struggled for years, for both readership and identity. As Folio described its transition, LATM was once a weekly produced by and distributed with the paper, then transitioned to a monthly in June 2008, then switched shifted to an editorial model separate from the paper and with its own editorial staff. Thus far in 2012, LATM has suffered a 21.3% drop in ad pages compared to 2011, and 2011 saw a 6% decline from 2010.
Thomson called the LATM the “definitive handbook for life in Southern California,” sort of a “New Yorker” for SoCal. But in its place, the Times is developing a quarterly product focused on luxury, design, fashion and style. The Times promises “digital and mobile iterations intended to further enhance our feature coverage and deepen our connection with our members and advertising partners.”
It is an ironic move that a cash-strapped newspaper will launch a luxury title, but likely a wise one. Luxury titles like Boating and Architectural Digest are weathering the economic storm far better than their consumer counterparts, and Forbes and Time Magazine have both launched luxury titles this year.
Newspaper Sites Competing With In-House and Reader Produced Video
Newspaper websites have been weak on the rich media content that attract visitors. But a select few are venturing into over-the-top broadcasting, producing video on par with their TV competitors, reports Diana Marszalek of TVNewsCheck. The websites for the Denver Post, Boston Globe, the Twin Cities’ StarTribune, SeattleTimes and Louisville’s Courier-Journal are all moving into in-house-produced video content. And they are attracting talented journalists, like DenverPost.com’s Anne Herbst, a national Edward R. Murrow award winner.
“The good news from my perspective is that content is king, not the medium any longer,” said Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) Chairman Kevin Benz in an interview with TVNewsCheck. That enabled the StarTribune.com, a newspaper website, to win regional Emmy awards. A Boston.com (the Boston Globe website) video series on the late Senator Ted Kennedy was similarly up for a national Emmy.
And content drives traffic: StarTribune.com enjoyed a 297% increase in videos played from April 2011 to April 2012, though the paper did not detail how that translated into dollars. Presumably, it is a strong case-builder for display advertising.
Local papers will not have quite the budgets the manpower or budgets to become ersatz TV stations, but they can meet the trend halfway. Digital First Media last week announced that it would launch 12 new community newsroom projects, to build upon the success of the Newsroom Café launched by the Register Citizen in Torrington, Conn. The Café was an experiment that led to the Register Citizen being named the 2011 Innovator of the Year by the Associated Press Media Editors.
All of its Denver outlets, including The Daily Camera, dailycamera.com, BuffZone.com and BoCoPreps.com in Boulder, Colo., are planning a variety of community engagement approaches, including enabling local residents to upload video they shoot of sporting events, or of recording sessions for local bands in the “Camera Garage studio.”
That content will not have the quality of, for example, a story produced by Herbst for DenverPost.com; it will lean more toward the iReports on CNN.com. But in time, it should be a boon to newspapers that rely in display, search and targeted ads.
National Magazine Awards: Big Surprise - Magazine of the Year Winner An Ad Page Loser
Something is off, when the best magazine of the year cannot attract advertisers.
At last night's Ellie Awards in New York, held by the American Society of Magazine Editors, Magazine of the Year Winner was TIME. But as Folio details, TIME fell almost 21% from 286.95 ad pages in Q1 2011 to 227.01 pages in Q1 2012. Rival Newsweek enjoyed a 27.5% spike to 183.26 pages in Q1 2012.
National Magazine Awards 2012 Winners and Finalists
MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR
Winner: TIME
Finalists: Esquire; New York; The New Yorker; Popular Mechanics.
GENERAL EXCELLENCE, PRINT
General-Interest Magazines
Honors large-circulation weeklies, biweeklies and general-interest monthlies
Winner: Bloomberg Businessweek
Finalists: GQ; New York; The New Yorker; Vice
Women’s Magazines
Honors women’s magazines, including health and fitness magazines and family-centric publications
Winner: O, The Oprah Magazine
Finalists: Glamour; More; Real Simple; W
Lifestyle Magazines
Honors food, travel and shelter magazines as well as city and regional publications
Winner: House Beautiful
Finalists: Bon Appetit; Country Living; Garden & Gun; Texas Monthly
Active- and Special-Interest Magazines
Honors magazines serving targeted audiences, including enthusiast titles
Winner: Inc.
Finalists: The Fader; Field & Stream; Men’s Health; Popular Mechanics
Thought-Leader Magazines
Honors literary, scholarly and professional publications as well as small-circulation general-interest magazines
Winner: IEEE Spectrum
Finalists: The American Scholar; Aperture; The New Republic; Virginia Quarterly Review
DESIGN
Winner: GQ
Finalists: Bloomberg Businessweek; Interview; New York; Wired
PHOTOGRAPHY
Winner: Vogue
Finalists: GQ; Interview; National Geographic; Virginia Quarterly Review
NEWS AND DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Winner: Harper’s Magazine for “Juvenile Injustice,” October
Finalists:
Harper’s Magazine for “Uncertain Exodus,” July
National Geographic for “Too Young to Wed,” June
The New York Times Magazine for “From Zero to 104,” September 4
TIME for “Birds of Hope,” January 17
FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY
Winner: The New York Times Magazine for "Vamps, Crooks & Killers," December 11
Finalists:
National Geographic for “Taming the Wild,” March
TIME for “Portraits of Resilience,” September 19
Vogue for “Lady Be Good,” March
W for “Planet Tilda,” August
SINGLE-TOPIC ISSUE
Winner: New York for “The Encyclopedia of 9/11,” September 5-12
Finalists:
Bloomberg Businessweek for “Steve Jobs,” October 10-16
ESPN The Magazine for “NFL Preview: The Vick Issue,” September 5
Garden & Gun for “Southern Food,” October/November
Wired for “Underworld,” February
MAGAZINE SECTION
Winner: New York for “Strategist”
Finalists:
Bicycling for “Know/How”
Esquire for “Man at His Best”
Real Simple for “Food”
Wired for “Start”
PERSONAL SERVICE
Winner: Glamour for “The Secret That Kills Four Women a Day,” June
Finalists:
Good Housekeeping for “Fractured,” July
Real Simple for “Your Holiday-Spending Survival Guide,” November
Redbook for “Would You Get a ‘Mommy Tuck’?” April
San Francisco for “The New School of Fish,” February
LEISURE INTERESTS
Winner: Saveur for “Italian American,” December
Finalists:
New York for “The Urbanist’s Guide To . . . ,” April 25
Outdoor Life for “Sniper School,” March
Texas Monthly for “Home Plates,” April
Wired for “The Wired Travel Optimizer,” October
PUBLIC INTEREST
Winner: The New Yorker for “The Invisible Army,” June 6
Finalists:
5280 Magazine for “Direct Fail,” December
Harper’s Magazine for “Tiny Little Laws,” February
Marie Claire for “The Big Business of Breast Cancer,” October
Men’s Health for “The Signature Wound,” November
REPORTING
Winner: The New Yorker for “The Apostate,” February 14 & 21
Finalists:
The Atlantic for “Our Man in Kandahar,” November
Los Angeles for “What Happened to Mitrice Richardson?” September
The New Yorker for “Getting bin Laden,” August 8
Vanity Fair for “Echoes From a Distant Battlefield,” December
FEATURE WRITING
Winner: Esquire for “Heavenly Father!” October
Finalists:
GQ for “The Man Who Sailed His House,” October
The New York Times Magazine for “You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” June 12
The New Yorker for “A Murder Foretold,” April 4
Rolling Stone for “Arms and the Dudes,” March 31
PROFILE WRITING
Winner: D Magazine for “He Is Anonymous,” April
Finalists:
ESPN The Magazine for “Game of Her Life,” January 10
Men’s Journal for “The Blind Man Who Taught Himself to See,” March
Rolling Stone for “Santiago’s Brain,” December 8
Sports Illustrated for “Dewayne Dedmon’s Leap of Faith,” November 14
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
Winner: New York for “Paper Tigers,” May 16
Finalists:
Esquire for “The Loading Dock Manifesto,” May
GQ for “Too Much Information,” May iPad Edition
The New Yorker for “The Aquarium,” June 13 & 20
Slate for “The Stutterer: How He Makes His Voice Heard,” February 22
COLUMNS AND COMMENTARY
Winner: Vanity Fair for columns by Christopher Hitchens
Finalists:
The Atlantic for columns by James Parker
Field & Stream for columns by Bill Heavey
Los Angeles for reviews by Steve Erickson
TIME for columns by Joel Stein
FICTION
Winner: Zoetrope: All-Story for “The Hox River Window,” Fall
Finalists:
The Atlantic for “Scars,” Summer 2011
McSweeney’s Quarterly for “Ambition,” April
McSweeney’s Quarterly for “The Northeast Kingdom,” August
Virginia Quarterly Review for “La Moretta,” Fall
Digital-First Strategies Deliver for Publishers, Advertisers
Three years ago, the Christian Science Monitor “began a jump-in-the-deep-end version of digital transformation,” describes the Poynter Organization. The daily newspaper went to a weekly print edition, maintaining daily news online. If that sounds like a surrender, guess again: The Monitor garners about 42 million page views a month and 8 to 10 million unique visitors, which is five times what it was before the transformation. Plus, ad revenue and content sales have grown more than 50% for the fiscal year closing April 30, “The best we’ve done financially since 1963,” writes editor John Yemma.
What the Monitor did which, for example, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have not, is to largely surrender its print edition—a gamble, but a strategy that has worked arguably as well as the NYT and WSJ strategies. And it placed more of an emphasis upon online advertising.
The challenge for the Monitor is somewhat like that of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: It is funded largely by endowments (The First Church of Christ, Scientist for the Monitor, government and corporate endowments for CPB). But endowments expand and contract, and have not held the Monitor above water any more than they hold up public broadcasting, else there would be no semiannual “pledge drives” on public television. “You might see the systematic decrease of our longstanding subsidy as similar to the erosion of print ad revenue at a locally based newspaper,” wrote Yemma.
And like newspapers, the Monitor is going digital, treading water until the digital strategy pays off. The Monitor has an operating budget of $18.6 million, and is down $4.5 million for this fiscal year, and budgeted for $3.3 million next: but it counts on the digital transformation to turn it around by 2017. (“Trading print dollars for digital dimes,” as Digiday describes the dilemma.) And those dimes are coming from high-end brands like Infiniti and Nokia.
Quit Crying Over Print
Digiday summed up the challenge by digital to print media: “$40 billion evaporated with little likelihood of return [but] rather than waste more time pointing fingers, publishers need to get on with figuring out what’s next.” For years, the news industry depended upon classified ads which Google, Facebook and Craigslist now own. “This market dynamic continues to move so quickly that its last owner, Yahoo, has already faltered into a lesser tier.”
The solution for publishers is, simply, to carve a niche and own the distribution. “A marketplace where buyers have multiple channels to reach the same audience only leads to a race to the bottom.”
The Monitor is somewhat like the Huffington Post—it is the demographic that differs. Both have a distinct audience, Scientologists (among others) for the Monitor, a younger-and-progressive skewing demo for HuffPo. Both endeavor to provide high-end first-hand content: Both have global and U.S. correspondents monitoring world events, the campaign trail, the Supreme Court, tech, science, and the environment. And the Monitor wins the occasional scoop: CSM on April 9 covered the reversal of immigration from Mexico, hitting the presses a week before a Pew report confirmed the trend. But HuffPo was a digital-only product that never had to throw off the shackles of a print edition and make the transition to digital.
Both Monitor and HuffPo skew to an educated late 30s-early 40s wage-earning demographic—a sweet-spot for digital reading. That’s what works for them: They meet the readers.
Similarly, Penton Media’s Technology Media Group in February announced that, in response to audience and marketer demand, it would transform all of its brands to all-digital beginning this month. “We conducted research amongst our audience and advertisers and found that they were really looking for an enhanced digital experience and were becoming less reliant on print magazines,” said Peg Miller, Penton technology market leader. Miller noted that the Penton audience is largely one of IT professionals and developers working in a digital environment. Penton had double-digit gains in digital edition subscriptions FY 2011-2012, and “We’re finding that our audience prefers to learn about technology through multiple channels – whether it be printed words, videos, audio, screencasts and in-person events.” Penton Technology Media Group brands include Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Pro, DevPro, System iNetwork and The VAR Guy, among other titles.
Penton is hardly stepping raiding Monitor or HuffPo’s readerships: but the lesson is the same. Successful publishers meet the readers where they are and with a unique value proposition. And that in turn means value for advertisers.
Audit Bureau: Paid Digital Saves Newspaper Circulations
The news is good for newspapers. The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) has released the semiannual newspaper FAS-FAX and Audience-FAX reports, which include top-line print online readership.
Circulation for the 618 newspapers reporting comparable multiday averages rose a modest .68%. Circulation for the 532 newspapers reporting comparable Sunday data increased 5 percent.
The biggest gainer was The New York Times, the daily circulation of which (digital included) jumped 73.05%, “largely because of the introduction of its paid digital subscription model last yearm” the paper described. The Times’s digital subscription packages, which launched in the U.S. on March 28, 2011.
Still, The Wall Street Journal remained king among daily papers, with a total circulation of 2,118,315. As the WSJ itself described, demand for digital content helped offset a decline in print circulation. Weekday digital circulation grew 61.6%, while print fell 6.7 percent.
Of the major dailies with national circulation, only The Washington Post suffered, with an almost 8% dip in total circulation. Interestingly, as the Poynter Organization describes, several big gainers charge for online access (with paywalls), while almost none of losers do—including The Washington Post. Three of the five papers that posted the largest percentage gains in Sunday circulation now charge for online access (including The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times and Newsday), while four of the five with the largest drops do not. One of them, the Los Angeles Times, put up its paywall in March.
Surprisingly, Gannett, which owns the Detroit Free-Press (down 6.7%) owns the only significant national paper (USA Today) without a paywall, and appears to have no plans for one. It will charge for online access to all of its local newspapers including Detroit Free Press, but not USA Today, which took a modest .64% dip by ABC data.
Economist Proves Its Point With ABC Report: Readers Pay for Quality Content
The Economist and the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) have announced that “The Economist” is the first weekly magazine to release a Consolidated Media Report (CMR).
In January, The Economist slammed the brakes on the “everything is free” ethos, when the magazine’s Managing Director for the Americas Paul Rossi called the free or lower-cost digital model “suicide.” Rossi told the crowd at the Digiday Publishing Summit that “It makes no sense in my mind if you think a mag on a newsstand has a [value] to a reader of $4.99 that you sell that to a reader digitally for 99 cents or $1.99…I don’t understand the logic.” Rossi also addressed the problem of digital advertising not coming close to replacing print revenue—partly because he felt that lower- or no-cost content devalues digital ad placements.
The Economist’s CMR contains information on all of its branded assets, including its print journal, tablet app, website, e-newsletters and social media channels, and they are fairly impressive:
- Print and digital circulation: 893,208
- Economist app total unique devices: 255,425
- Average digital subscription price: $105.11
- Total page views for The Economist online: 14,914,663
- Total monthly unique browsers: 3,592,114
- E-newsletter net distributions: 16,407,019
- Social media interactions for Facebook; 1,009,815, Twitter; 2,279,796, YouTube; 502,118, Tumblr; 43,007, LinkedIn; 23,003
“With the rise of digital reading, marketers want to understand how readers are interacting with magazines beyond the print form,” said Rossi. Referring to the CMR, he added that “While not perfect, we believe it’s a positive first step to show advertisers our brand footprint and to help them make comparisons across platforms and titles.”
ABC’s theory behind a CMR is to provide a single resource for advertisers and media buyers to understand a publication’s reach across both print and digital platforms, through a single, independently verified resource. Two monthlies, Popular Science and Fine Cooking, have also issued reports. The Economist is only the third magazine to publish a CMR.
The news may not be all rosy for Economist: Its own press release boilerplate claims "a growing global circulation (now 1.5 million including both print and digital)," per ABC figures for July through December 2011. Somehow between then and now, and with the more stringent CMR analysis, that figure has dropped to 893,208. But the apps and emails (and an online price of $105.11) still qualify it as a success story, by any measure.
UBM: Business Media Company’s Digital Revenues Surpass Print
This is the year analysts predicted that digital advertising will surpass print in revenues, and here is some proof. Digital revenues outpaced print at business-to-business group United Business Media for the first time in Q1. UBM publishes InformationWeek, The Journal of Commerce and Psychiatric Times, among other titles. It also owns PR Newswire, TechWeb, and offers marketing services.
The company released its Q1 fiscal report yesterday, and for the first time, its online revenue exceeded print. As BtoB describes, revenues from online marketing services totaled $34.4 million, and print marketing services totaled $30.8 million.
That represents an 11.2% boost in online marketing services for Q1 compared to 2011, while print marketing services plummeted 31.4% in Q1 year-over-year (YoY). This was due in part to drops in ad pages, also, to some divestments in titles.
Earlier this week, its InformationWeek title unveiled three new marketing services products in educational programming, social media and live streaming video. The InformationWeek University product includes a sponsored track, which can supposedly deliver a minimum of 800 leads for the sponsor.
The experts at eMarketer called it in January, when they predicted that the online ad spend would bypass print in 2012—across all media. UBM is a well-diversified business publisher, but consumer publications are expecting a digital boost too, after a healthy growth across media of 42.1% in 2011. That growth will be fueled this year by, among other factors, the move to e-reading and magazine apps, and by advertising around the 2012 election and summer Olympic Games. eMarketer has projected that U.S. online ad spending will grow 23.3% in 2012 to nearly $40 billion, and nearly $53 billion in 2013. This will make 2012 the first year in which online ad spends will surpass the total spent on print ads, with $39.5 billion online versus $33.8 billion in magazines and newspapers.
Boston Globe Drops Paywall to Attract Subscribers: Are Paywalls Just for National Papers?
The Boston Globe is offering free access to its online edition through May 9, reports paidContent. Reporter Jeff John Roberts dug into the story, to find that the Globe has attracted just 18.000 subscribers since erecting the paywall last October.
Roberts reported earlier in the week that The New York Times Co. announced that online revenue had slid 2% from a year ago—but in that year, and after erecting its paywall, the Times has attracted 454,000 paid digital subscribers. The Times is so bullish on its digital subscribership that in March it cut the number of free stories nonsubscribers are allowed to read by 50%, from 20 per month to 10. The changeover took effect on Monday, April 20th. The Times on its website explained that “The change provides us with an opportunity to convince another segment of our audience that what The Times has to offer is worth paying for.”
The Globe is gambling on the same, and its idea is “getting the word out on new features, including the Boston Globe e-paper,” said the Globe’s Executive Director of Sales and Marketing Peter Doucette—but the Globe has yet to articulate what those features are, other than automatically adapting to mobile devices.
Likely, the Globe will find that a regional newspaper has less of a value proposition for subscribers (and advertisers) than does a more national property like The New York Times—for that matter, like the Los Angeles Times, which according to comScore data, was the third-most-viewed U.S. newspaper website in 2011 (17 million unique visitors a month); the New York Times and Washington Post ranked first and second.
Hyundai Canada Experiments With “Accelarated Audience Reach”
In what it claims is the “first massive takeover of its kind,” automaker Hyundai will take possession of “the most prime real estate Postmedia has to offer.”
On April 24 (and April 25 in Alberta), Hyundai will own the front page of every Postmedia digital, print and mobile platform for an entire day.
Postmedia Network is a wholly owned subsidiary of Postmedia Network Canada Corp.. am dos the largest publisher by circulation of paid English-language daily newspapers in Canada, representing some of the country’s oldest and best known media brands. Postmedia offers advertisers and marketers integrated solutions to effectively reach target audiences through a variety of print, online, digital, and mobile platforms.
The offering by Postmedia is called “Launch Pad,” and the company claims it represents the largest one-day audience available to marketers, and a way to achieve “accelerated audience reach.” Elements include a four-page full colour A-section promo wrap on all of Postmedia’s daily publications plus repped brands, a full cover wrap on Financial Post Magazine; opening homepage takeover on all newspaper websites, canada.com and Dose.ca; mobile homepage takeover on all Postmedia iPad apps plus site takeover of all standard ad units on iOS and Android apps and mobile optimized websites.
“Hyundai is a company that is always on the hunt for new ideas,” said John Vernile, Vice President of Marketing at Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. “We like to do things a little differently. One of our most important goals is to reintroduce ourselves to Canadians, so a front cover property with a first-rate group like Postmedia is the perfect approach to get our message out in a big way.”
“Take a bold advertiser with a big story to tell and a media partner with the creativity, products and the most coveted audience around and you have Launch Pad,” said Simon Jennings, Chief Digital and Revenue Officer, Postmedia Network. “Advertisers want high-impact creative solutions to meet their marketing objectives. Our goal is to provide them with not only innovative solutions but seamless execution and outstanding customer service. And have fun doing it.”
Research: Consumer Media Will Be Strong in 2012, Outpacing GDP
According to at least one source, 2012 is looking pretty rosy for consumer media: this despite gloomy news from Kantar Media and the Publishers Information Bureau.
Driven by a somewhat improved economy, and stronger-than-expected results across digital media, total U.S. communications industry spending increased 4.2% in 2011 and is on pace to grow at an accelerated 5.6% in 2012, to reach $1.185 trillion. That will outpace gross domestic product growth (GDP) by 4.4%, according to Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private equity firm serving the communications, media, information, education, and business services industries in North America and Europe.
VSS in its VSS Forecast Mid-Term Update projects that several industry segments are projected to outperform GDP growth of 4.4% in 2012, including Pure-Play Consumer Internet & Mobile Services (18.1%), Public Relations & Word-of-Mouth Marketing (14.6%), Broadcast Television (9.3%), Subscription Television (7.7%), and Branded Entertainment (7.5%).
“While the VSS Forecast Mid-Term Update clearly shows the strong growth momentum of digital media in such segments as Pure-Play Consumer Internet & Mobile Services, and Branded Entertainment, it also highlights the impact of a strengthening economy,” said John Suhler, Co-Founder and President of VSS. “What’s resulted is an increase in spending within the U.S. Communications Industry as both consumers and businesses begin to expand their use of a variety of communications platforms and tools such as mobile devices and tablets. Bottom line: This is the best news for the industry in several years.”
Industry Sectors with the Biggest Gains
While growth estimates for five of six Industry Sectors – defined as groups of industry segments sharing characteristics based on primary revenue streams – outpaced expectations for 2011 and 2012, Sectors with the most dramatic changes included Targeted Media and Traditional Marketing.
Spending on Targeted Media in 2012, which includes direct marketing, branded entertainment, outsourced custom content, pure-play consumer internet & mobile services, and business-to-business (B-to-B) media, has been revised upward from the original 7.7% growth projection in the annual VSS Forecast to 8.1% in the VSS Forecast Mid-Term Update. The upward revision was driven by strong performances in all segments except branded entertainment and outsourced custom publishing. VSS adjusted the 2010-2015 CAGR from 7.9% to 8.4%, reaching $278.4 billion to reflect expectations of stronger growth for most digital components within the sector, including e-custom publications, e-media in B-to-B media, and the entire pure-play consumer internet & mobile services segment.
Traditional Marketing, which includes consumer promotions, B-to-B promotions, public relations and word-of-mouth marketing, has been revised upward from 3.1% to 3.8% in 2012, as businesses are expected to continue to increase spending for all three segments, especially B-to-B promotions. VSS raised the 2010-2015 CAGR for Traditional Marketing from 3.6% to 4.2% to reflect anticipated acceleration in spending on Traditional Marketing during the latter part of the forecast period, reaching $86.6 billion.
Entertainment & Leisure Media, which includes subscription television, entertainment media (TV programming, home video, videogames, recorded music, box office) and consumer book publishing, is the only industry sector to be downgraded in the VSS Forecast Mid-Term Update for 2012. VSS found that while there will be gains in box office and branded digital platforms, such as online and mobile videogames, it will not be enough to help offset prolonged weak results in the printed book market. As a result, the growth rate of 5.8% forecast for the sector in 2012 was trimmed to 5.7%. The 2010-2015 CAGR was also cut from 5.6% to a 5.5%, reaching $353.9 billion, as strong growth in videogames, driven by the release of new console hardware during the forecast period and a faster-than-expected stabilization in the recorded music industry, will help mitigate the projected deeper declines in print consumer books.
VSS did not change the projected 2.6% growth rate for 2012 spending on Traditional Consumer Advertising Media, which includes broadcast television, newspaper publishing, consumer magazine publishing, broadcast & satellite radio, local consumer directories, and out-of-home media. While the ad market in the first half of 2012 is expected to remain sluggish, record-breaking political and Olympics advertising will drive growth for the remainder of the year. The 2010-2015 CAGR was also left untouched at 1.9%, with spending reaching $160.4 billion because although the projected decline in print advertising will be deeper than initially expected, it will be offset by increases in internet and mobile advertising offerings of branded traditional media.