• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 22, 2016

The pace of losses in the American newspaper and magazine publishing industry accelerated in the first quarter of 2016, according to data from the US Census Bureau, reported by Crikey.

Total US newspaper publishing revenues, including advertising and circulation, fell 4.4%, from US $6.51 billion in the first quarter of 2015 to US $6.22 billion in the first quarter of 2016. (The census figures are not broken down into separate figures for ads and circulations.) That was after a 3.8% fall in 2015 revenues, from US $28.1 billion in 2014 to US$27 billion.

US magazine publishers had total revenues fall 4.5% in the first quarter of this year from the same period in 2015, from US $6.66 billion to US $6.36 billion, after a 3.7% drop in 2015 from 2014 from US $29.4 billion to US $28.3 billion.

This data used to be issued by the Newspaper Association of America and the Publishers Information Bureau, says the report, broken down into data for ad revenues by type and newspaper and magazine sales. Both stopped publicizing this data three years ago.

The first quarter falls in revenue underlines that nothing is growing for newspaper and magazine publishers, especially digital ad and circulation revenues, or at least not growing fast enough to offset the slide in analogue print ads and sales revenues, concludes the report.

Pew Research reported earlier this month that American newspaper publishers’ digital ad revenues also fell 2% last year. But the wider internet ad business grew more than 20% last year to nearly US $60 billion.

The Census Bureau data showed that radio and TV revenues rose 4.5% in the March quarter of this year to US $17.546 billion from US $16.819 billion in the first quarter of 2015. Cable TV revenues jumped 6.8% in the same period, to US $19.76 billion from $18.26 billion.

For additional information from Crikey, please visit here.