Voice to shut down?

manonthestreet

It doesnt augur well for the Galway paper to hear the news today that 20 staff have been let go with just two weeks wages from the Cavan Voice and Monaghan Voice. It's in the Irish Times. The response to the Galway paper has been very poor as well and plans for Mayo papers and one in Limerick have been well and truly shafted. So it looks like the Voice are the ones to blink first in the battle of the new papers.




Papers close with loss of 20 jobs
CIARÁN HANCOCK

STAFF AT the Cavan Voice and Monaghan Voice weekly newspapers were yesterday told by its owners that they were ceasing publication with immediate effect.

The papers were owned by Voice Provincial Newspapers, a firm headed by John Shiels and believed to be backed by millionaire philanthropist Niall Mellon.

Mr Shiels told staff at 3pm that the papers were ceasing publication due to poor advertising revenues. It is understood that locks at the premises were changed immediately after this announcement.

Up to 20 full-time staff and a small number of part-time employees have lost their jobs at the Cavan-based company.

The papers were launched last September and were published each Tuesday. Several thousand copies of both were distributed weekly. They operated from the same building and were both edited by Paul Neilan, who has also been made redundant.

Employees were told they would receive two weeks pay as compensation. "It was a total shock to us," one staff member told The Irish Times . "There was no inkling from management that this was going to happen."

Mr Shiels declined to comment on the closure.

Competition has been fierce in Cavan with five titles operating there recently, including the well-established Anglo Celt.

The Voice group's website was "temporarily down" yesterday. It has a stable of about eight freesheet titles, including ones in Galway, Kilkenny and Laois.

The company was incorporated in 2006 and its registered address is listed as Kilkenny city. No financial details are available.

snubbleste

Not suprised, I did not think there was a market for another paper in Galway when it launched. It's obvious when you walk into a shop on Wednesday and there is a stack of the Galway Voice there unsold.

It has a stable of about eight freesheet titles, including ones in Galway, Kilkenny and Laois.

What freesheet does it have in Galway ???

manonthestreet

Its not a freesheet in Galway. The Galway Voice. it's paid for. about 2 euro I think. Bit mean about changing locks and stuff in cavan and Monaghan. Doesnt say much about the owners. That Niall Mellon guy is the fella who builds houses in South Africa. Maybe he should have stuck to it as he'd build cities for the amount he is losing on this venture.

galway008

I didn't think it was a very good paper anyway.

Steyr

Good luck to it, this city has too many papers anyway no need for it.

TristanPeter

Personally, I thought it was a fairly dismal looking paper anyway of the same ilk as The Sentinel. Come to think of it, how the hell did The Sentinel survive??

muppetkiller

Agreed it's a rubbish paper and no loss to Galway anyway.

smackbunnybaby

muppetkiller wrote: »

Agreed it's a rubbish paper and no loss to Galway anyway.

cant argue with that!

but you cant even read muppetkiller, what would you know?

randylonghorn

Plenty of papers in Galway without it.

The Advertiser is the only one I look at usually, unless there's something big on around the place.

galwayrush

Terrible value for the amount they were charging for it.

muppetkiller

smackbunnybaby wrote: »

cant argue with that!

but you cant even read muppetkiller, what would you know?

Dam my secret is out...although it does puzzle me as to how I read the OP and your post ? :eek:

randylonghorn

Cloud installed the new Telepathy 1.7.4 patch last week, and after a bit of tweaking, he has finally got it working now ...

There's too many newspapers in Galway. The Advertiser is the only one I'd read, and sometimes the First too. Never even glanced at the Voice, didn't even know they were charging. It's a bit stupid for a local newspaper to be charging when their competitors are free.

Sponge Bob

still down :eek:

http://www.voicenewspapers.ie/index.html

williejoe

Just saw this on the web. The staff in the Galway office were ringing around re jobs Friday morning and the four or five who were promised jobs in the Mayo Voice were in tears this morning. They left good jobs in the western.
It seems that the group did not imagine that they would fare so badly in Galway on a Monday. The positioning of that First Galway paper seems to have fecked them up, I was told today.
Ollie Canning and other sports people have colums in it but they're all written by a guy who does sport for the Galway Independent so they're not reall at all.

:eek:
Four local news titles cease operations
Friday, 7 March 2008 16:32
Up to 40 jobs are to go following the closure of four local newspaper titles.

The Monaghan, Cavan, Tipperary and Kildare Voice newspapers all ceased to operate this week.

The Voice Newspaper Group blamed the downturn in the economy and competition from British newspaper groups.

The Chairman and founder of The Voice Newspaper Group, John Sheils, said: 'It is a sad day for all of us, however, I must stress that the closures did not reflect the quality of the newspapers and the high standards achieved by the staff who worked there.

'We have every confidence that, with the commitment and expertise demonstrated by the staff, they will secure employment in the near future.'

The company's titles in Kilkenny, Laois, Galway and Tallaght will continue to be published.

manonthestreet

The Galway Independent could be vulnerable as they had major losses in Limerick and Cork and their ads in Galway are dog cheap. Advertiser and Tribune money should keep their papers well afloat. It's a bad time to be setting up a business. The new i-radio had only a handful of ads and you can expect a lot of chanegs there too. The music is brill but the presenetrs are like pre-teens. They make Flirt sound like Radio 1 they're so juvenile. I wonder will the Galwap Post start up now. They'd be mad as the economy is not good.

Toto Wolfcastle

I got 3 free papers in the door this week, including the Advertiser and the Galway Independent, and I find it hard to believe that many people would pay for a similar paper.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Galway Voice was next to go.

Also the Galway Independent must not be doing that well if they have to put it through doors. They don't put the Cork Independent through doors. (It's rubbish but loads of people pick it up)

Rachelino

I reckon the Voice Group were always fighting a losing battle setting up in places with a lot of established titles, especially trying to charge as much as they do. They've been setting up a lot of papers in the last year- it was bound to end somewhere.

Whatever about the Galway Voice but I don't think the Galway Indo is in trouble. It's well established by now and ad prices could be low because of a promotion or something.
There have been no 'major job losses' in the Limerick and Cork papers and the Galway Indo has always been delivered to my place- it goes on a combo of door to door and bulk loads in shops in Limerick as well.

Free papers have the edge if you ask me- people will always pick them up passing or read them if they're shoved through the letterbox

manonthestreet

Maybe not as they have been around for a while, but they have been surviving on the largesse of wannabe media moguls who have poured according to accounts about three million yoyos into it. The same people will not be easily parted from their money now as the owners go around looking for another injection of funds. And five or six years, and at least a dozen editors later, the paper still hasnt found a niche for itself. It's still really a poor man's advertiser.

kellyreilly

Regarding Galway Independent, both of Galway's freesheets Indo and Advertiser are distributed into nearly all city homes, though I don't know about Galway First. The Galway Independent is currently the Advertiser's poor relation but the advertiser is on the go for decades. The Independent's journalists all seem to be young women not too long out of college whereas the advertiser tends to have older and more experienced journalists. The trick is to mix the two. In time the Independent will become stronger. Already one notes that there is now a larger content compared to the old days

Galway First (owned by the advertiser) was set up not as a credible paper but as way of ensuring there was no competion at the start of the week, the one time there wasn't a Galway paper.

The Setinel survives because it's owned by the Tribune.

The Galway Voice didn't succeed because it came out the same day as the City Tribune, they charged (too much) and the news wasn't always exclusive to Galway, there was a lot of generic news from other Voice newspapers.

In Galway there are eight newspapers (though not eight owners)
Monday-Galway First (rubbish)
Tuesday-Sentinel (bought by 'old galwegians' and really bored people)
Wednesday-Galway Independent and Tuam Herald (TH-deaths notices, price of sheep etc)
Thursday-Advertiser and Connacht Tribune
Friday-City Tribune and Galway Voice

Given that there are eight Galway papers surely a daily freesheet newspaper has potential. Basically if the indo or advertiser came out every day mon-fri ??

The Galway Voice should try and go as a freesheet and distribute it into homes. As one may gather im into my newspapers and even i have only bought the voice once.

Galway Voice with money behind it, Galway's free daily newspaper ??

williejoe

Yes kelreily, i have to disagree with u about the galway independent. Its the old adage about peanuts and monkeys, are you saying that just because they are young women they are not good enough. I thought john fallon writes for them, ann healy does courts for them, liam horan from the Irish independent writes things for them every week. and they have decades of experience. They had a lot of experienced journalists there in the past but they all left for one reason or another. They have had about 50 journalists there over the years and all the decent ones have left, and that's why they are bland.

It is very bland and doesnt go out on a limb and when it does it soudns ridiculous like the time they ran astory about how the indo can exclusively reveal that it is likely joe o reilly would appeal his murder conviction. The indo is stil going because of joe o higgins i think his name is. he put millions into it and will never see it back. it was at a time when papers were up for sales for millions and he thought they would sell, but large groups have taken a look at it and have baulked. The truth is that nobody comes off best when they come up against a free paper with a circulation and loyalty like the advertiser and the paid for market is covered by the tribune. The sentinel and the first are just tactical papers by both groups and they have worked as in evident in recent days by the voice being stunned by its lack of success in Galway and this leading to their decision to close the other ones.

I agree with your assessment of the others. the tribs and the advertiser have the most credibility and aligned with the local radio, there is no need to go anywhere else for news. You can only hack so much after all. But fair play to the indo but without the backer and the cheap cheap ads they would have gone the way of the voice a year ago. Whether they survive another one without sugar daddies remains to be seen.

Rachelino

The crux of free papers is that they often have a small editorial team in comparison with the amount of sales staff they have because ads as opposed to news are the commodity. More established freesheets like the Advertiser often have more reporters but are still small compared with dinosaurs like the Connacht Tribune. Those kind of regional papers tend to have huge editorial teams (and even an office in Loughrea in this case).

When you look at it like that the Advertiser and Galway First and the Galway Indo do a pretty good job with the resources they have whereas the old guard should be doing a lot better.

I think a big problem for the Voice group is that they try to run paid-for papers in the style of freesheets. They had a total team of 20 in Cavan, writing, designing and selling ads for both the Monaghan and Cavan Voices. You get what you pay for.

manonthestreet

The problem for the Voice group rachelino is that they made a lot of mistakes. It was nothing about quality. They paid too much in wages, brought out a glossy magazine that nobody wanted and tried to be all things to all people. This failed for them all over the country and yet they thought they could crack Galway which is a unique media market - people have been getting quality coverage for free for years so a paid for was not going to work. They were seemingly arrogant too about planning to open 29 papers which revealed they were in dreamland. It takes a lot of good planning to run a business and even more to keep it going. The Tribune has been running for 100 years and the Advertiser for about 40. Both are different papers and require different styles. the advertiser has seven or eight advertisers now and they are all doing well i believe. The tribune has the radio station which is the main earner for them now. The radio makes 70 per cent of the entire tribune groups profits but then it did cost them 20 million and it is widely believed they only bought it to keep the advertsier from buying it. The trib are believed to have insisted that it be announced that UTV were the underbidders but utv pulled out at 15 million. The advertiser went as far as 19 mill before forcing the trib to buy it for 20 and this for a station that was worth 15 million.:D
It's a hard business to make money in. Ask the mcdonalds in galway. They had the galway observer and athlone observer for years and that went bust badly a decade or so ago. They say that the first 30 years are the hard bits. after that it's a doddle. the indo and the voice are finding this out now, no matter what sort of spin they put on it.

eyresquare

TristanPeter wrote: »

Personally, I thought it was a fairly dismal looking paper anyway of the same ilk as The Sentinel. Come to think of it, how the hell did The Sentinel survive??

because the sentinel is only 50c which is very cheap compared to 2€ for the voice

SimpleSam06

kellyreilly wrote: »

Given that there are eight Galway papers surely a daily freesheet newspaper has potential. Basically if the indo or advertiser came out every day mon-fri ??

Do you have any idea how much it would cost to print and distribute a newspaper to ~30,000 homes every single day? You'd need to charge a crazy amount for advertisements, and that ignores the problem of actual news - there just isn't that much going on in Galway on a daily basis.

manonthestreet wrote: »

Both are different papers and require different styles. the advertiser has seven or eight advertisers now and they are all doing well i believe.

Well the Advertiser has for some time been charging immense amounts for ads, a slot the size of the palm of your hand will set you back over €300. They've gotten away with it, and gotten very rich, because of the property boom over the last 8 years, easy money. This has also enabled them to open all these new papers.

Now, however, the tide is turning with the collapse of the property bubble, and the real estate adverts are drying up. You can see the signs in the amount of "Your advert here" and "competition" spots on Galway First, they couldn't sell advertising for those spaces. I saw one on the front page the last day, a sure sign of trouble. I haven't looked at their other regional papers, but I'd be surprised if they were flying high, delivering to an entire county is a very different prospect to delivering to a single large urban center like Galway.

I'd predict over the next few years the Independent will strengthen its position at a cost to the Advertiser, which will get into a price war regarding advertisements, and the other Advertisers will fall by the wayside.

williejoe

Yes simsam, i agree with some of what you say, but business people are not fools and they have been adv with the advrtser because they are getting results, I'd say. You can only assume that ifr they got the same response for half the price in the independent, then they would be with the independent. However, for the independent to recover like you say would suggest that they have to make unprecedented profits to pay back the 4 million in accumulated debt that they have and as their books show they only made 2000 a week in Galway last year (their best year), they would have to do that for forty years before they would pay that back. Nobody is going to come in and buy them now. And they have been letting staff go and not replacing them for cutback reasons. That has not happened in any of the big ones yet such as the tribune advertiser and galway first, but they have big warchests. I hear the advertiser has just bought a string of free papers in Estonia and over Eastern Europe now as well so they can't be doing to badly. Still as long as I get my cinema times I dont mind.

SimpleSam06

williejoe wrote: »

Yes simsam, i agree with some of what you say, but business people are not fools and they have been adv with the advrtser because they are getting results, I'd say.

Just being a business person doesn't insulate a person from being a fool, in fairness. This holds especially true in large and well established businesses, such as the Advertiser, which are nearly institutions in their own right, with built up ways of doing things which are unlikely to change. The last few years have been easy, and it was the easy profits which attracted all the competitors, but the next few years will tell a tale.

Don't forget, its not bad times that kill businesses, its expanding too fast.

williejoe wrote: »

However, for the independent to recover like you say would suggest that they have to make unprecedented profits to pay back the 4 million in accumulated debt that they have and as their books show they only made 2000 a week in Galway last year (their best year), they would have to do that for forty years before they would pay that back.

They don't really need to recover to hurt the Advertiser badly - all they need to do is take adverts away from them. Money spent on the Independent isn't being spent on the Advertiser. If they are making a profit at all then they are in with a fighting chance and can hold on indefinetely.

On a related note, Galway First just came through the door and it was the skinniest edition I've seen yet.

manonthestreet

I just read mine on the web and its 40 pages thick, and last weeks was 32 so i think your maths are wrong simplesimon. by your reckoning its grown 25 per cent.
Willie John is right though about the debts. that's what kills ya in the end. and three or four million that the indo owe cannot be wiped off. and with them needing to turn the same profit for forty years to pay that back, that assumes that the cork and limerick papers will stop losing 15k a week each. So the profit that Galway makes in one week is lost in one day on just one of the others. Not a great business model. Not what I learned in comm anyway.
I just checked the other papers on line and the athlone advertiser was nearly 70 pages last week so that's hardly struggling is it. But i'll keep an eye on it

There's no sign of poverty in the advertiser yet, especially if they're opening in eastern europe. that's why they have those foreign journalists writing for it. Magada Schultz and the others. they're in training i hear.

SimpleSam06

manonthestreet wrote: »

I just read mine on the web and its 40 pages thick, and last weeks was 32 so i think your maths are wrong simplesimon. by your reckoning its grown 25 per cent.

I just counted, its 20 pages thick. So by your reckoning, streetman, its lost 35% of its content. Interesting that you should mention the websites though, since I feel they illustrate exactly what I am talking about. If you have a platform like the Advertiser you could do unreal amounts of damage with an online portal site, blow everyone else out of the water. That they haven't only illustrates the old way of thinking that permeates the company, and that will ultimately lead to their downfall.

manonthestreet wrote: »

Willie John is right though about the debts. that's what kills ya in the end.

Cashflow kills companies, not debts. Plenty of companies run permanent debt overhangs, including banks. Opening a half dozen new papers in the space of a good year and then being unable to pay for them in bad years is a textbook way to run a business into the ground.

manonthestreet wrote: »

and three or four million that the indo owe cannot be wiped off. and with them needing to turn the same profit for forty years to pay that back, that assumes that the cork and limerick papers will stop losing 15k a week each. So the profit that Galway makes in one week is lost in one day on just one of the others. Not a great business model. Not what I learned in comm anyway.

Where exactly are you getting these figures from?

manonthestreet wrote: »

There's no sign of poverty in the advertiser yet, especially if they're opening in eastern europe.

Most of eastern europe is still in a third world state economically, which means its very cheap to open there. The downside is of course that your profits are similarily miniscule.

williejoe

sorry to interrupt guys in this who can piss the highest contest, but my Galway First this morning is 40 pages thick, so that kinda means one of you is wrong. I cant remember but I think its the guy who said it was 20. Please quote correct figures if you're gonna debate.

manonthestreet

Simplesam, it's 40 pages. I have the real copy here now through the door. You're unreal. Oh and where did I get those figures. How about the CRO. Company registration office. Just pay a fiver and they're yours to see.