Publishers of periodicals lost about 2.3 billion crowns in advertising revenue due to coronavirus last year, which represents a decrease in gross advertising investment by 13 percent. Print sales then fell by 10 to 15 percent last year. This is according to data from the Union of Publishers and Nielsen Admosphere monitoring.
The biggest drop in the publishing house was in April and May, when it was more than a third. In November, revenues fell by 16 percent. “The autumn decline was half that of the spring, but it is necessary to take into account the seasonality of the development of the advertising market, when the largest revenues are achieved in October and November,” said Václav Mach, the executive director of the Union of Publishers.
According to Mach, the actual decrease in the volume of advertising revenues in net values in 2020 was at least one quarter of the volume compared to the previous year. Publishers had to respond to the decline in revenues and the coronavirus situation by reducing labor costs and also by moving employees to the home office. In the area of distribution, approximately 500 points of sale were closed and the ban on Sunday sales had a significant effect.
At the same time, despite numerous and repeated promises of state aid, publishers of newspapers and magazines have not yet received any form of support from the state at all, which would be specifically targeted at their sector. “It is common ground that the restrictive conditions of existing general COVID support schemes for other businesses could not be used by publishers because they were not covered by those programs or would not be able to meet the restrictive conditions of those programs,” Mach said.
The state promised all media (the press, radio and television), two billion crowns in the form of advertising and then a quarter of a billion only for the print media. But this has not yet implemented.
In addition to state-funded advertising, publishers are proposing, for example, the introduction of an extraordinary reduced VAT rate on print sales from 10 to 5 percent and support for distribution and sales in the form of a subscription contribution.
