By: Jennifer Saba During a conference call with analysts today, Douglas McCorkindale, Gannett's chairman, president, and CEO, said that "USA Today has clearly been the bright spot in 2005."
The national paper will show an uptick in "quality" as well as overall circulation in the next Audit Bureau of Circulations report, despite the rise in the cover price to $.75 implemented last September, executives said.
USA Today was the only paper McCorkindale confirmed experienced a circulation increase. When asked about Gannett's overall performance in ABC's upcoming March Fas-Fax, McCorkindale responded that he didn't get those numbers in advance. But then he added, "I think we're probably going to do better than many."
"We have work to do, the whole industry has work to do," McCorkindale acknowledged, regarding industry circ declines.
As for Gannett's Q1 results, newspaper advertising revenue on a pro forma basis grew 4.9% when compared to the same period last year.
National advertising for the same period increased 4.1%. Local was up 6.1%, and classified rose 4.1%.
Within the classified category, employment increased 8.8% and real estate advanced 1.3%. Auto declined 3.7%. McCorkindale said that Gannett is not hearing of "any signs of pickup" with local automobile dealers. "The softness is going to last a while," he said. "I hope I'm wrong."
At USA Today, advertising revenue for Q1 increased 4.8%. Paid advertising pages totaled 1,101, compared with 1,099 in Q1 of 2004.
Gannett's circulation revenue for Q1 inched up 0.5%. Total daily circulation for the quarter is down 2.7% and Sunday circulation declined 3.2%.
When asked about April results, McCorkindale said that he hasn't heard "any thing negative but a lot of it depends on auto."
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