A Tale of Two Struggling Media Industries

Despite hemorrhaging viewers, the broadcast networks sure did well selling off their ad time. ABC was even able increase their rates for commercial time on the strength of a strong fall 2007 and wishful-thinking ignoring its collapse this past spring. Fox, meanwhile, continued strong, and its "Remote-Free TV" concept seems to have paid off: Advertisers were happy to spend 35-40% more to get their ads in the highly buzzed new shows "Fringe" and "Dollhouse," both of which will boast fewer commercials per hour.

NBC even did better than it did last year, though it filled its ad time by dropping its rates. (And as good as the broadcast networks did, cable did even better, with the Turner channels (TNT, TBS and truTV) among those raking in the dough.)

Meanwhile, that other old-media dinosaur, print journalism, is having similar problems with subscribers but is paying far more dearly for it: "After an 8% decline in advertising revenue last year, newspapers are seeing an additional 12% drop so far this year, and financial reports issued by some recently would suggest a 14-15% decline in May."

No; wait, that doesn't seem appropriate:

That's more like it.