Where can I see the income structure of paper media? Mainly the ratio of distribution income to advertising income. Where can I find the data?

Another important source of income for western newspapers is government subsidies. Because newspapers have always been regarded as "tools of democracy" in western traditional concepts, almost all newspapers in Europe are subsidized by the government, especially the Swedish government. There are three ways of subsidies: the government usually gives direct economic subsidies to the second largest newspaper in a region (a field) to prevent the first largest newspaper from forming an absolute monopoly on the newspaper market, resulting in only one voice in the region; Newspaper companies other than the second largest newspaper can enjoy the preferential treatment of reducing the value-added tax of ordinary companies from 25% to 6%; In addition, if two or more newspapers share a distribution channel, each newspaper of each newspaper can get a distribution subsidy of 00.5-0. 1 SEK. According to Professor Robert Picard, some Swedish newspapers receive government subsidies that can account for 1/3 of the total income of newspaper companies. He also said that the government subsidies received by American newspaper companies accounted for about 8% of their total revenue.

I don't know if anyone in China has done this research, at least I haven't found the relevant data. However, my years of experience in newspaper industry tells me that in the income structure of China newspapers (mainly daily newspapers), the distribution income accounts for too low, while the advertising income accounts for too high.

Take Shanghai Morning Post, which is quite successful in Shanghai at present, as an example.

The Shanghai Morning Post is priced at 0.5 yuan, with an average daily circulation of about 400,000 in 2003. It is estimated that its total distribution income is 73 million yuan, and the net distribution income should be 45 million yuan after deducting 38% of the expenses of the mail distribution system; In 2003, the advertising amount of Morning Post, the general agent of Shanghai Zhongrun Advertising Company, was 275 million yuan. The morning paper also runs some thematic and classified advertisements, but the quantity is not very large. It can be estimated that its annual advertising net income in 2003 was 300 million yuan. Besides, the morning paper has no other income. Based on this calculation, we can draw a conclusion that in the total income of the morning paper, the distribution income only accounts for 13%, while the advertising income accounts for 87%! In contrast, the Xinmin Evening News of Wenhui Xinmin United Newspaper Group has a slightly higher price (0.7 yuan per copy) and a larger circulation (654.38+00000 copies). I didn't have time to make a detailed calculation, but what is certain is that the distribution income of Xinmin Evening News will not exceed 25% of the total income, and there will be no second daily newspaper in Shanghai that exceeds the proportion of Xinmin Evening News.

Personally, I have always insisted that the distribution income of China Daily (especially Metropolitan Morning Post) accounts for a small proportion of the total income. With more and more newspaper pages, this "one-legged" business model, which relies almost entirely on advertising, is difficult to maintain for a long time. At the same time, this situation has also raised the unit price of domestic newspaper advertisements.

2. Revenue from newspaper distribution

Compared with the problem that the distribution income accounts for a low proportion of the total income, the problems existing in the distribution structure of China newspapers are more prominent. The retail proportion of newspaper distribution in China, especially the metropolitan morning paper, is generally much higher than that of family subscription. As a result, the distribution cost of China Newspaper Group is high (the distribution retail cost is much higher than the subscription cost), and at the same time, there may be cash flow difficulties to some extent, which also makes it difficult to control the output (printing volume) of China newspapers, thus inevitably causing a large number of newspapers to be unsalable and returned.

Family subscription is the main selling method of Swedish regional Japanese newspapers. The Norrkopings Tidningar we surveyed almost 100% relies on subscriptions, and some supermarkets only sell 700 to 800 newspapers every day. The retail ratio of S-Posten in Gothenburg is slightly higher, but it is still less than 10%.

Not only in northern Europe, but also in the whole western countries, daily newspapers are mainly distributed by family subscriptions. In the circulation of American newspapers, home delivery accounts for the absolute majority, and only a few four city daily newspapers are mainly retail. Many newspapers, as big as The New York Times, Washington post, Chicago Tribute, Los Angeles Times and Boston Sunday Globe, as small as Long Island news daily, Orlando Sentinel and Staten Island Daily, have more than 70% family subscribers, and some reach 85%⒂.

The New York Times, the largest newspaper in the United States, accounts for about 40% of its total retail sales and 60% of its home delivery stations. This is a big change compared with 20 years ago, when retail accounted for 90% and home delivery was only 10%. John, Senior Director of Enterprise Development Department of The New York Times? John darley said, "For many years, our business direction has been to turn retail readers into home subscribers as much as possible." [14] In addition, the household circulation of major regional newspapers in the United States, such as The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer, accounts for about 75% of the total circulation, and the retail proportion of Sunday newspapers is slightly higher, but not higher than 50%.

In my opinion, the root cause of China's over-reliance on retail lies in China's rigid newspaper distribution mechanism. Although in recent years, China newspapers have taken some measures to attract subscribers, such as giving away and lottery, on the whole, there is no difference between the retail price and subscription price of China newspapers. For example, the retail price of Xinmin Evening News is one RMB in 0.7 yuan. You spend 255.5 yuan on shopping all year round. If you subscribe for a whole year, you must pay 250 yuan in one lump sum (no matter what payment method); Furthermore, if you book 10 years, you must also pay 2500 yuan in one lump sum (no matter what payment method). In this case, it is hard to imagine how many readers will become long-term subscribers of the newspaper! At present, most subscribers don't want to be subscribers just because they think it is troublesome to go to the newsstand to buy newspapers every day.

On the contrary, the subscription of Swedish newspapers is extremely flexible not only in terms of price, but also in terms of payment. The subscription of Norrkopings Tidningar is divided into 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and so on. The longer the package, the more discounts you can enjoy. You don't have to pay the subscription fee at one time, but you can pay the subscription fee within a certain period of time as needed; There are also many payment methods, such as cash, check, bank account deduction, credit card deduction, etc., and different discounts will be obtained according to different payment methods. I checked its subscription price, and found that the biggest discount is 1290 Swedish kronor a year, which is about 40% lower than the price bought from the newsstand every day. Similarly, according to Jessica Weissglas, financial director of S-Posten in Gothenburg, if readers buy at the newsstand every day, the price of S-Posten in Gothenburg for a whole year is 4,536 Swedish kronor (the retail price of Sunday edition of S-Posten in Gothenburg is 12 kronor). If you subscribe for a whole year,

The flexibility of western newspapers in distribution is also reflected in the different pricing for different readers. Let's take Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's largest newspaper, as an example. It charges different users in different regions. For the same subscription for one year, the most expensive local subscribers pay 2000 Swedish kronor more than Stockholm (where the newspaper headquarters is located) (almost 5.5 Swedish kronor more per day, while the retail price of Dagens Nyheter is only 12 Swedish kronor). Not only that. Readers outside Stockholm can't get the particularly thick Sunday edition of Dagens Nyheter.

Let's look at The New York Times's distribution economics.

Newspapers in the United States generally sell for 50 cents, while those in new york Times sell for 75 cents. Newspapers in other cities are more expensive. The price of a copy of The New York Times in Hawaii is 175 cents. The New York Times's annual issuance income is about $500 million. The price of newspaper distribution is different between local and national (foreign): the national (foreign) price is $4.75 on Sunday, 1 dollar on weekdays and $559 for the whole year; The local price is $3 per issue on Sunday, $0.75 per issue on Sunday and $390 per year. The average printing and distribution cost of each newspaper is $ 2.75-3 on Sunday and $0.65 on Sunday. The vast majority of American newspapers are losing money in distribution, while The New York Times is basically flat.

On the one hand, these flexible measures adopted by European and American newspapers are based on economic considerations of cost and income, on the other hand, they are also aimed at actively screening the reader market and ensuring that newspapers attract real "target readers". In my opinion, the long-standing rigid distribution mechanism of China newspapers has not been improved, mainly because the post office monopolized the distribution channels. However, with China's accession to the WTO, this situation is undergoing tremendous changes. In the long run, the correct direction of China Newspaper Group should be to establish its own distribution channels, especially the family subscription network. This not only helps the newspaper to form a flexible and efficient distribution mechanism, but also creates a foundation for the future newspaper group to establish a reader database and provide information and other value-added services.

3. Advertising revenue of newspapers

From an economic point of view, the price of most commodities is inversely proportional to sales, that is, the higher the unit price of commodities, the smaller the sales; The lower the unit price, the greater the sales volume. In economic theory, the slope of this inverse correlation curve mainly depends on the elasticity coefficient of goods. An important strategy that enterprises should adopt when pricing their own goods is to find a suitable balance between unit price and sales volume, so as to achieve the goal of maximizing sales and profits under the premise of production capacity.

Advertising is a commodity with a large elasticity coefficient, which means that the demand (sales volume) will drop sharply for every unit price increase. The newspaper's optimal advertising strategy should be to find the most reasonable advertising unit price, sell the most reasonable advertising pages and get the maximum advertising revenue. Please pay attention! This does not mean that the higher the advertising unit price, the better, nor does it mean that the more advertising pages are sold, the better.

Surprisingly, the advertising price of western newspapers is not as high as we thought, and even far below our expectations to some extent. In Sweden, the unit price of the full-page advertisement of Norrkopings Tidningar newspaper we investigated is only 20,000 Swedish kronor (100 Swedish kronor = 108 RMB), while the full-page advertisement of S-Posten, the second largest daily newspaper in Sweden, is only 40,000 Swedish kronor, and both newspapers are big newspapers. This is not only far lower than the advertising unit price of Xinmin Evening News and Shanghai Morning Post (the unit price of full-page color advertisement of Xinmin Evening News is RMB 6,543.8+0.6 million, and that of News Morning Post is RMB 6,543.8+0.2 million, all of which are four editions [[tabloids]]), and even lower than the Oriental Morning Post, a newly-established newspaper of the above-mentioned new group.

The same is true of the United States, where the global advertising market is the most developed. The average price of a full page in The New York Times is $30,000, and that of a black-and-white version is $20,000. The price of a Sunday edition is twice this price. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a full-page display advertisement on weekdays, with an average price of $25,000. The classified advertisement cost $6,000, and the price of the first Sunday edition increased by 33%. The price of the regular full-page Orlando Sentinel is $654.38+500,000. The full-page advertisement of the Financial Times, a famous British century-old newspaper, generally costs 1, 000 to 4,000 pounds (2 1).

Considering that the per capita GDP and per capita income of Sweden and the United States are more than 20 times that of China, you can imagine how expensive the unit price of newspaper advertisements in China is! Such a high advertising unit price discourages a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises who are willing to buy advertisements, and also seriously limits the full development of the advertising market in China. I will discuss this in detail in my conclusion.

Perhaps it is because the advertising price is relatively low that the advertising structure of western newspapers is quite different from that of China newspapers. In western newspapers, classified advertisements and consumer goods advertisements for SME customers have always been an extremely important part, while in China, the proportion of these advertisements is quite limited. A new trend is that with the change of social and economic structure and the increasing localization of newspapers, the proportion of national advertisements and corporate image advertisements in western newspapers is getting lower and lower, while the proportion of classified advertisements and even personal information advertisements is rising.

As a major feature of regional newspapers, Norrkopings Tidningar publishes a considerable number of birth and funeral advertisements on its people's news page every day. This kind of advertisement is very humanized and flexible. According to them, whenever a baby is born in our hospital, a photographer specially hired by Pince Tidninggar in Norkko will take commemorative photos of the newborn and its parents (the copyright belongs to the newspaper). The newspaper will also make a business card-sized congratulatory advertisement for the child and his family for free, and if the parents of the child are willing, the newspaper will sell these photos to them. Under normal circumstances, parents immersed in joy will gladly pay the bill. There is a charge for publishing funeral advertisements in Norrkopings Tidningar, but the price is less than half that of commercial advertisements of the same scale. The income from selling photos and funeral advertisements has accumulated over time, and it has also become a major source of income for newspapers. More importantly, the publication of these advertising information makes the newspaper layout full of human feelings, which is deeply loved by readers and is beyond the reach of national newspapers.

In the United States, among the total advertisements of national daily newspapers in 2000, three types of advertisements were retailer advertisements (US$ 265,438+US$ 40.9 million), classified advertisements (US$ 654,380+US$ 96.08 million) and national advertisements (US$ 7.653 billion). In many large and medium-sized cities, classified advertisements are the first financial source of newspapers (generally above 40%). On the contrary, the proportion of classified advertisements in most newspapers in China is almost negligible. Classified advertisements in American newspapers can be described as various contents, such as job hunting, vehicle trading, real estate rental and sales. Needless to say, selling secondhand goods, housekeeping, weddings and funerals, courtship, birthdays and announcements are all common varieties in classified advertisements. There are too many special advertisements for various holidays. On Valentine's Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving Day, Easter, Christmas and other important festivals, you can see a large number of highly targeted classified advertisements ... Of course, among all classified advertisements, the top three are job recruitment, vehicle transaction and real estate rental and sale (22).

Generally, classified advertisements in American newspapers account for about 20%-50% of newspaper advertising area, and their income accounts for 35%-40% of all advertising revenue. ..... According to statistics, classified advertisements in the United States 1999 accounted for 43.5%(23) of the total revenue of classified advertisements.

So far, the classified advertising market of China newspapers is still a "virgin land" to be reclaimed. As far as I know, apart from Guangzhou Daily (a big advertising sales newspaper headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong and China), Beijing Youth Daily and several influential regional newspapers, such as Beijing and Jinghua Times, have made some unsuccessful attempts to explore the classified advertising market. Almost all local daily newspapers in China do not have a clear classified advertising section. In Shanghai, even Xinmin Evening News and Morning News, the two most successful newspapers in the advertising market, account for less than 65,438+00% of their total advertising revenue.

In Scandinavia, another major feature of newspaper advertisements is various interviewers. In addition to its own layout, NT Group Newspaper sends out some 4-inch and 8-inch printed insert advertisements of local companies mainly based on coated paper almost every day. According to Per Herikssong, advertising director of Gotteborg S-Posten, the income of insert advertising accounts for about 8% of the total advertising revenue every year, and the unit price of insert advertising is much more expensive than that of normal newspaper advertising. According to the data provided by Dr. Erik Wilberg, a Norwegian media consultant, at present, insert advertisements in Norwegian newspapers account for less than 5%, but there is an obvious upward trend. In China, the crux of this problem still lies in the post office system.

Incidentally, among all the advertisements of Norrkopings Tidningar, 65% are self-employed and 35% are advertising agents. Later, we learned that the advertising marketing model of newspapers in most parts of Sweden is like this: the ratio of self-employment and agency is 2: 1. This model seems to be the opposite of the advertising "general agent" that has become increasingly popular in China newspaper industry in recent years (all the advertisements of a newspaper are sold by an advertising company, which can also be called "general contracting").