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Mar. 2003
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Ad Revenues Plunge Below 6 Trillion Yen in 2002: Dentsu Report
-- Newspaper Ad Revenues Drop 11% --
| Advertising Expenditures by Medium(2002) |
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Advertising Expenditures
(\Billion) |
Comparision Ratio(%) |
Component Ratio(%) |
| Total |
5,703.2 |
94.1 |
100.0 |
| Major Media |
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|
 Newspapers |
1,070.7 |
89.0 |
18.8 |
| Magazines |
405.1 |
96.9 |
7.1 |
| Radio |
183.7 |
91.9 |
3.2 |
| Television |
1,935.1 |
93.6 |
33.9 |
| Subtotal |
3,594.6 |
92.4 |
63.0 |
| Sales Promotion |
|
|
|
| Direct Mail |
347.8 |
95.5 |
6.1 |
| Flyers |
454.6 |
99.7 |
8.0 |
| Outdoor |
288.7 |
96.5 |
5.1 |
| Transit |
234.8 |
94.7 |
4.1 |
| POP |
172.0 |
101.3 |
3.0 |
| Telephone Directories |
155.9 |
94.4 |
2.7 |
| Exhibitions/Screen Displays |
327.8 |
94.7 |
5.8 |
| Subtotal |
1,981.6 |
96.7 |
34.8 |
| Satellite Media |
42.5 |
90.2 |
0.7 |
| Internet |
84.5 |
115.0 |
1.5 |
According to Dentsu Inc.'s annual report "Advertisement Expenditures in Japan in 2002,” released on Feb. 17, total advertising spending in 2002 fell 5.9 percent from 2001 to 5.7032 trillion yen. That figure represents a second consecutive year-on-year decline, with the margin of the drop increasing by 5 percentage points from that of the preceding year.
By type of media, advertising spending on newspapers decreased 11.0 percent to 1.0707 trillion yen, marking the largest margin of decline among the four surveyed major types of media. And the newspaper market's share in total advertising spending continued its decline, to 18.8 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from 2001.
Defying earlier expectations for a pickup due to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the Japan-South Korea co-hosting of soccer’s World Cup, total advertising spending in 2002 plummeted substantially from the year before. Many businesses cut their advertising spending due to the continued economic weakness marked by rising unemployment and worsening income levels.
The developments in adverting spending by four types of media are shown in the table.
Advertising spending on newspapers in particular showed a big decline. In the April-June period, advertising spending gradually recovered, due largely to the World Cup. But the recovery was short-lived and began to falter later, due to the weak stock market and low corporate earnings.
By category of newspaper, national newspapers saw advertising revenues drop 11.7 percent. The average margin of decrease was 8.5 percent for local newspapers and 8.0 percent for sports dailies.
By type of industry, advertising orders from the "information/communications" and "finance/insurance" sectors, which had sustained growing newspaper advertising until 2000, plummeted 23.0 percent and 21.3 percent, respectively. Ads from the “automobile/related equipment” sector fell 11.3 percent and from the “real estate/housing equipment” industry 12.3 percent. Revenues from “classified ads/others” fell 15.6 percent. So did advertising orders from the food industry, which dropped 2.5 percent despite brisk orders for ads about health foods. Advertising orders from the “pharmaceuticals/medical appliances” industry fell 5.9 percent, although ads for clinical tests for new medicines remained rather brisk. With the sole exception of the “precision instrument/office equipment” sector, advertising orders from all industries marked a year-on-year drop in 2002.
Dentsu Inc. estimated that advertising spending on the four types of media (newspapers, magazines, radio and TV) would increase a marginal 0.4 percent in 2003. According to Dentsu, there are some bright spots in the economy, such as signs of improved corporate earnings and a pickup in production and sales in the information technology (IT) industry, but it sees the overall advertising scene remaining very weak. Dentsu said there are some hopes for new efforts by many media organizations to develop and enhance new forms of media for advertising.
As for the prospects for advertising orders with newspapers in 2002, Dentsu said a recovery can be expected in the “information/communications” sector, where competition keeps intensifying, as well as in the “consumer electronics/audio-visual equipment” sector, which is concentrating on sales of plasma display TVs and liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs. In addition, there are signs of a pickup in orders from the “automobile/related equipment” sector, where sales competition remains strong. Overall, though, Dentsu says there is no major pickup in advertising on the cards, and it expects ad spending on newspapers to remain almost flat compared with 2002.
Newspark Features Exhibition of Supplements
Newspark, the Japan Newspaper Museum in Yokohama launched a special exhibition of newspaper supplements on March 1. It show will run through June 2.
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Around-The-world backgammon board
Tokyo Asahi Shimbun produced and distributed the board in January, 1910, as a part of its efforts to publicize the Great Britain and Japan Exhibition held them.
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The exhibition Titled “The World of Kaleidoscope : Newspaper Supplements” features a display of about 270 of the 3,000 newspaper supplements owned by the museum.
On display are illustrations of major news, portraits of celebrities, caricatures, notes in shorthand of popular plays or storytelling, games and other features that preserve the atmosphere of the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras, respectively.
Two PC terminals at the venue also allow visitors to access all of the 3,000 supplements.
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Topics.......Topics.......Topics........
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Asahi’s Kawakami, Kyodo’s Hirai, Nikkei’s Suzuoki Share Vaughan-Ueda Prize
The screening board for the Vaughan-Ueda Memorial Prize has taken the unusual step of naming three journalists as joint winners of the fiscal 2002 Vaughan-Ueda Memorial Prize. The award is usually given to a single journalist, but the board said it settled on three journalists this year due to the difficulty in choosing between the relative merits of their achievements.
The winners are Yasunori Kawakami, 47, the head of the Asahi Shimbun’s General Bureau for the Middle East and Africa, Hisashi Hirai, 50, a staff reporter who was with the Kyodo News General Bureau in China and now heads the Seoul Bureau, and Takabumi Suzukoki, 48, a Nihon Keizai Shimbun correspondent in Hong Kong.
The Vaughan-Ueda Prize, which is modeled on the U.S. Pulitzer Prize, was set up in 1950. It is funded by donations from the widow of Miles W. Vaughan, a late former vice president of United Press International (UPI) and various Japanese media. The prize was set up in memory of achievements by Vaughan and former president Sekizo Ueda of Dentsu Inc., a major advertising agency. The two men were known for promoting international understanding through journalistic activities prior to, during, and after World War II. Vaughan and Ueda were lost at sea together in an accident in Tokyo Bay in January 1949. The prize is conferred annually to the journalist(s) who contributed most to international understanding through their professional activities.
The awards ceremony is to be held in March.
The board released the nomination filings and profiles of the prize recipients:
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Yasunori Kawakami (47), of the Asahi Shimbun:
Kawakami has been energetically following the turbulent situation in Islamic society, particularly the Palestine issue. When tensions grew in Palestine following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, he obtained an exclusive interview with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to explore the prospects for a peaceful solution. When Israeli forces began driving into West Bank areas, Kawakami rushed to Bethlehem and Jenin, ahead of journalists from rival media organizations, and filed on-the-spot reports on the disastrous consequences, backing up his reports with analytical pieces on the political and social background of the developments. Combined with his ample background knowledge and easy-to-understand writing style, his practice of going out and seeing for himself what was happening on the scene helped to inform Japanese readers of the factors that lie behind the complicated Palestinian crisis.
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(profile)
- Born in Nagasaki Prefecture
- Graduated from the Arabian Language Division of the Osaka University of Foreign Studies in 1981
- Joined the Asahi Shimbun in the same year
- Moved to the foreign news division in 1992, after working for the lifestyle and other divisions
- Assigned to the Middle East and Africa General Bureau for three and a half years, starting in 1994
- Appointed chief of the Jerusalem bureau in April, 2001
- Appointed concurrently as chief of the Middle East and Africa General Bureau in September 2002
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Hisashi Hirai (50), Kyodo News
Twice assigned to South Korea as a correspondent, Hirai has won a reputation as an experienced North Korea watcher. He was assigned to the General Bureau in China in 1999. In July of last year, he reported in great detail about North Korea’s economic reform plans, ahead of any other media in the world. He also closely followed the movements of North Korean residents trying to leave the country due to its serious food shortages over the past several years, while building relationships of mutual trust with groups assisting such North Koreans. In the much-publicized incident in which five North Korean asylum-seekers rushed into the compound of the Japanese Consulate General in Shenyang, China, Hirai obtained advance information on the asylum-seekers’ plans and succeeded in videotaping the scene from a building across the street from the consulate. His sensational video footage was repeatedly aired in Japan and abroad, arousing public emotions on the issue of human rights violations. Hirai also discovered the fact that just before the Shenyang incident, the Japanese ambassador to Beijing had instructed his staff to expel as unwanted intruders any North Koreans who might make it inside Japanese official compounds.
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(profile)
- Born in Kagawa Prefecture
- Graduated from the Law Faculty of Waseda University in 1975
- Joined Kyodo News the same year
- Studied at Yonsei University in Seoul to learn the Korean language in 1983
- Assigned to the foreign news division in 1985
- Assigned to Seoul as a correspondent for three years, starting in 1989
- Assigned as chief of the Seoul Bureau in June 1995
- Assigned to the General Bureau in China in January 1999
- Assigned again as chief of the Seoul Bureau in January 2003
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Takabumi Suzuoki (48), the Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Stating in Hong Kong as a correspondent for the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in 1999, Suzuoki has been covering news in the entire Asian area, centering on China, utilizing expertise gained by following corporate activities in Japan. It has been customary for Japanese media to concentrate on covering political, diplomatic and military affairs in China, as well as following macroeconomic developments. However, Suzuoki has taken a unique approach in depicting China from the microeconomic viewpoint, closely following industrial and corporate activities. He has also been sending out warnings to Japanese industry and to the stagnating Japanese economy in general, based on his experiences in covering industrial and corporate activities in various other Asian countries.
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(profile)
- Born in Aichi Prefecture
- Graduated from the Politics and Economics Faculty of Waseda University in 1977
- Joined the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in the same year
- Assigned to local branches, the industrial news division, the economic news division (Osaka), the foreign news division, and the Asian news division
- Assigned to the Seoul branch
- Studied at Harvard University in the United States
- Assigned as a correspondent in Hong Kong in 1999
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2002 Sales of Books, Magazines Mark 6th Straight Annual Decline
According to the 2002 annual report on the publishing industry by the Research Institute for Publications, estimated total sales of books and magazines for 2002 dipped 0.6 percent from a year earlier to 2.3105 trillion yen in the sixth straight year-on-year drop. Total sales hit their lowest level since 1991 in further evidence that the publishing industry is in a long-term downtrend.
The institute attributed the decline to Japan’s falling birthrate and the resulting reduction in younger readers, who are generally heavy book consumers, as well as to the continued stagnation of the Japanese economy. The institute also cited the use of mobile phones and the Internet as causing a shift in the lifestyle of younger generations and the way in which people collect information. Other factors include increased use of libraries and retailers selling used but almost-new books. An institute official said, “The conventional book-reading behavior of owning books is undergoing a change away from purchases of books at bookstores. It is becoming a structural problem.”
According to the report, estimated total sales of books in 2002 increased a small 0.4 percent to 949 billion yen, in the first year-on-year gain in six years. That increase was attributed to brisk sales of comparatively higher-priced books such as the “Harry Potter” series. But the estimated volume of books sold dipped 1.3 percent to 739.09 million copies, posting a sixth straight year-on-year decline.
Estimated total sales of magazines fell 1.3 percent to 1.3615 trillion yen in the fifth consecutive year-on-year drop. In terms of volume, sales were off 2.1 percent for both monthly and weekly magazines. The circulation of general-interest weekly magazines was down 0.6 percent for the six magazines published by newspaper companies and for the eight magazines put out by publishing houses.
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Story of the Month>>>
Japanese Newspapers Heat Up Coverage of “Godzilla” Matsui
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Many Japanese newspapers are covering every word and deed of Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees, devoting an unusually large space to him.
Media fever had been seen for slugger Ichiro Suzuki and reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki of the Seattle Mariners and pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii of the Los Angeles Dodgers in U.S. Major League baseball, as well as for midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata in European league soccer.
But an unparalleled amount of information is now being carried about “Godzilla” Matsui, who had ranked number one in terms of popularity and performance when he was still in Japanese pro baseball.
The “Godzilla” fever is not limited to sport dailies that specialize in such sports and entertainment news. Many general-interest newspapers such as the local Hokkoku Shimbun newspaper published in Ishikawa, Matsui’s native prefecture, are following suit by assigning full-time reporters to the United States or by hiring stringers exclusively to cover Matsui.
This heavy coverage of overseas sports news faces the problem of the time difference. For instance, the news conference to officially announce Matsui’s entry into the Yankees started at 12:05 p.m. in New York (local time), which was 2:15 a.m. in Japan, around the time at which the printing of morning editions is usually almost complete.
Most NSK-member sports dailies issue morning papers, and some extended their editorial deadlines and printing times to publish front-page pictures of Matsui wearing his new Yankees uniform.
A senior editor of one of the sports dailies said that his newspaper is prepared to do the same thing again whenever there is any big news about Matsui. Another editor said that his aim is to publish as much of the very latest Matsui news as possible.
Indeed, Matsui’s entry to a U.S. Major League club on the East Coast has posed a new headache for many Japanese newspapers, once again due to the time difference.
The Seattle Mariners and the Los Angeles Dodgers, for which Ichiro, Ishii and some other popular Japanese stars now play, are located on the West Coast and their night games therefore end at around 2 p.m. local time in Japan. It has been out of the question for Japanese newspapers to publish the results of their games in evening editions because printing is always complete by that time.
But with the New York Yankees located on the East Coast, night games there end up finishing at around noon local time in Japan, making evening-edition coverage in Japanese newspapers a viable possibility.
The result has been that many general-interest newspapers have been making their coverage of Matsui a major attraction in their evening editions. In fact, many such newspapers are reporting Matsui’s daily performances, even in pre-season games, in their evening editions, and have also been increasing their overall volume of U.S. Major League news. The volume of news about Matsui and the major leagues is sure to jump even more dramatically as soon as the official season games begin.
For many sports dailies that publish only morning editions, the time difference is a big disadvantage, forcing them to publish the outcomes of Matsui’s games in papers delivered to subscribers only in the morning of the subsequent day.
Such sports dailies are trying to compete with general-interest newspapers by focusing on special features and analytical articles. Some editors at sports dailies are saying that wise readers will shy away from media that report only the straight results of Matsui’s games. Others admit that they can no longer depend on publishing simple game reports, saying that reader demand means they need to have experienced writers provide in-depth coverage of this newest highlight in baseball news.
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Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association
Nippon Press Center Bldg., 2-2-1 Uchisaiwai-cho, Chiyoda-ku,
Tokyo100-8543, Japan
bulletin@pressnet.or.jp.
Copyright 2003 Nihon Shinbun Kyokai
All right reserved
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