And, no that's not good.
I blogged early last fall about the announcement that, no Paper, NPR radio station KERA had an agreement to take over the Denton paper. (Since then, KERA has also taken over operations of Dallas' classical radio station, WRR, and is looking more and more like a growing behemoth in terms of legacy media today. Last Saturday's Dallas Snooze was below 15 percent adhole even counting obits as ads. I didn't even look at the StartleGram.)
And, speaking of adhole and CNHI? Let's jump into both.
When COVID hit, the Wrecked Chronic pivoted quickly to semiweekly in Print, then to weekly after that. Bad moves, IMO. I don't know what the adhole was then, but, this was still after Patterson had clawed it back from the Snooze, had decided not to circ further north (I am not sure if they did or not pre-Snooze acquisition more than 15 years ago) and other things.
OK. First weekend of January is kind of slow, yes.
Still.
22 pages, 38 percent adhole IF you count the obits. Well, a page and a half of obits piled up with the post New Year's death surge (anecdotal, but other editors have seen this), and if you subtract that, it was below 25 percent.
The CNHI part? When CNHI cut its print papers from daily to nondaily after COVID, it kept running all six days a week of crosswords, comics, etc. WHY? No other newspaper chain is buying your papers individually off your hands, or CNHI as a chain off RSA's hands, at your inflated ask. You're just wasting paper and whatever you're still paying to syndication companies.
Well, the DRC does similar.
Except worse in a way.
They have two daily crosswords, not just one. The other puzzles like the Jumble, etc.
(Forgot to check if either paper still runs a week's work of print horoscopes, Wouldn't that be the beat-all of shit-ass stupidity? "If you're a Pisces today, you should take note of asking yourself why you're reading a three-day out-of-date horoscope and adjust accordingly.")
Anyway, they do NOT run all six days worth of comics! They only run part of the week's comics. WHY?
And, per the part about KERA having an agreement, at least, to take you over, you don't have to goose anything anymore.
Seriously. They could have whacked that paper to 18 pages (one page was a full-page house ad cuz you can't print odd numbers of pages) and been fine.
Now, it would be interesting to be asked to be publisher there, if Patterson doesn't stay around after the takeover is finalized.
I'd work on:
- Moving it back to semiweekly in print, while killing the comics, one of the two crosswords and some other syndicated material;
- Circulation north of Denton — there's room for it;
- More local columnists, as well as bumping up paid in-house editorial staff, on sports as well as news;
- Beefing special sections.
That's a minimum.
I surely won't get that chance.
