Finance Matters

Archive for January 13th, 2010

The magazine industry had a rough year, losing an average of 17.5% of its ad dollars from 2008 to 2009, according to data released by the Magazine Publishers of America.

We broke down the chart to the most recognizable names, and reviewed the titles with the best and worst ad revenues.

The losers? Shelter titles Architectural Digest, Town & Country, luxury mag Conde Nast Traveler, and Fortune. W, a women’s fashion magazine, probably had too much competition from more successful titles like Cosmopolitan.

The winners? Gossip magazines (OK Weekly, People) and women’s magazines (Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal). Ad staff at Saveur, a gourmet food magazine, probably aren’t mourning the loss of Gourmet.

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See Also:

• AOL Finds A Home For Gourmet Orphans
• Gourmet Editor Ruth Reichl: Print Magazines Are Toast
• Magazines Still Wasting Time With Stupid Barcodes

The strikingly low level of insurance in Haiti means that the impact of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake on insurance companies is likely to be quite limited.

The quake did hundreds of millions of damages and may result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. But insurance coverage is so sparse that the effect on insurers and re-insurers will be slight, according to the publication National Underwriters.

Insurance penetration in Haiti is just 0.3 percent of the countries Gross Domestic Product, making Haiti one of the smallest insurance markets in the Americas. Half of that is car insurance.

The majority of insured property, however, is located in Port-au-Prince, which is just 10 miles from the epicenter of the quake.

The big re-insurers are MunichRe, SwissRe, ParisRe, and Hiscox, a division of Lloyds of London. 

In 2007 the World Bank put together the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility, which is intended to provide local governments with short-term liquidity in the case of a catastrophe.  Registered in the Cayman Islands, CCRIF’s reserves come from participating countries and donations from the governments of Canada, the United Kingdom, Bermuda, France and the World Bank. The CCRIF has issued a statement that yesterday’s earthquake will trigger a payout from the facility.

This is obviously a relief for insurance companies and their investors but very sad news for the Haitians.

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Pity NBC’s local news stations. Their 11 p.m. newscasts lost 19.7% of their overall viewers between November 2009 and November 2008, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by the Pew Research Center’s Project of Excellence in Journalism.

These are the numbers affiliates were looking at before they protested against NBC’s late night experiment (and won). Jay Leno’s low audience ratings weren’t nudging enough viewers into their broadcasts.

The research firm Harmelin Media also sent out a report, noting that NBC was hemorraging young viewers. Their 25- to 54-year-old viewer numbers dropped by an average of 25% from November 2008 to 2009.

In all, the newscasts lost a total of 1.8 million viewers, according to the Pew numbers.

Despite an overall decline of late-night local news viewers, NBC took the biggest hit out of all the broadcast stations.

ABC’s 9 percent drop in viewers was less than half of NBC’s, while CBS managed to slightly increase its audience.

Read more on exactly how executives used their late night template to crumble local news shows.

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See Also:

• Jay Leno Following Conan Out Of NBC?
• Conan Hires Top Celebrity Attorney To Shake Down NBC For $50 Million
• Conan Is Toast

The sale was cleared by U.S. regulators, but the Chinese agencies on the other end have yet to complete their side of the

After watching helplessly for months while product demand fell to a quarter of capacity, GM has decided to halt production of all Hummer products until the sale to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Corporation is complete, Jalopnik reports.

Staring January 19th, Hummer will halt all production, including the contract manufacturing at AM General for the Hummer H2 and production at GM’s Louisiana plant where Hummer H3 and H3T’s are built.

The drop in Hummer sales is attributed to a “zero ad budget,” the trend among consumers to look for more fuel efficient vehicles, and the stigma of buying products with a tainted image and an questionable future.

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See Also:

• The Hummer Is The Ultimate Chinese Car
• GM Sells The Hummer*
• Hummer Goes To China

Maybe the eleciton of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election won’t derail healthcare. At least not if state pols can do something about it.

Today the chatter is that local officials may drag their feet on seating him so that Washington Democrats have time to pass healthcare reform.

Mike Memoli and Kyle Trygstad of Real Clear Politics explain:

So now, even though a special election to finish the late Edward M. Kennedy’s unexpired term is set for Tuesday, it could be a month or even longer until that successor is sworn in — whether it is a Democrat or Republican. That’s a notable difference in procedure from the House; just last November, New York Democrat Bill Owens was immediately sworn in after his close win in the 23rd District. In Massachusetts, Democrat Niki Tsongas took office just days after her close victory in an October 2007 special election.

In the latter case, Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, explained that Tsongas was sworn in on the basis of a letter from his office saying that unofficial tallies indicated she was the winner, and that the result was not being contested.

“That was sufficient for the House. Apparently that is not sufficient for the Senate,” McNiff said.

Read the whole story — >

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See Also:

• Insurgent Massachusetts Senate Candidate Posed Naked In Cosmo
• Insurgent GOP Senate Candidate In Massachusetts Has Amazing $1 Million Night Online
• SHOCK: Poll Has GOP Candidate Now Leading In Massachusetts Senate Race