A couple notes from the 'death-of-media' front

This blog notes that the merger of Federated and May, combined with a likely change in media buying strategy by Federated for its Macy's brand, could result in a loss by newspapers of $425 million annually.

May and Federated combined were the newspaper industry's largest advertiser last year, spending about $1.2b. A significant drop could be expected just from eliminating redundant advertising in many markets. But also, if Macy's takes a national advertising approach, a Deutsche Bank analyst notes that it could result in only 30%-40% of the ad budget foing into newspaper instead of the current 70%.

On the TV side, however, the news is little better: the first week of July was the networks' lowest-rated week ever. While the week of Independence Day is traditionally poor, never before was it as bad as this.

CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox averaged 20.8 million viewers during the average prime-time minute last week, according to Nielsen Media Research. That sunk below the previous record, set during the last week of July in 2005.