More bad news for the news biz

The Tribune Company took a huge hit yesterday, reporting a 6% drop in revenue in December.

• Newspapers down 4.2%
• Newspaper ad revenue down 4.5%
• Retail ad revenue down 5.2%
• National ad revenue down 9.6%
• Classified ad revenue up 2.5%
• Circulation revenue down 3.5%
• Broadcasting and entertainment group down 11.9%
• Television ad revenue down 10.1%

Whew -- that's ugly!

I liked this line from the E&P write-up: "The company said [much of the] drop was due to the timing of Christmas on Sunday and the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma in Florida."

Uh-huh. All through 2005, ad revenue drops were, very legitimately, being blamed on the fact that 2004 was both a presidential election year and an Olympic year. Neither of those factors applied to December, however, so they had to go digging for something else.