Dan Gainor on Fox News, Discusses Decline of Media

December 10th, 2008 10:32 AM

Vice President for the Business & Media Institute, Dan Gainor, spoke with Gretchen Carlson, host of "America's News HQ," about the decline of media and particularly newspapers.

"The model for media in general is not working. We had a great model for a long time for networks, great model for print, nobody's been able to come up with a way to deal with the internet and make a ton of cash just yet," Gainor said on the Fox News broadcast Dec. 9.

Gainor noted the advertising troubles of print media in particular -- advertising is down 9 percent.

"So you've got newspapers around the country shedding jobs. They predicted 43,000 newspaper jobs lost in the last couple years. That's devastating an industry," Gainor said.

That's forcing the hand of some media companies. The New York Times Co. recently decided to mortgage its own building, borrowing up to $225 million to ease a cash flow problem in 2009, as reported in the paper Dec. 7.

The Times said its credit rating from Standard & Poor's recently dropped to below investment grade with Moody's Investors Service saying it was considering a similar move.

Tribune Co. has been having even worse financial trouble that the Times. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and cut jobs in many print news bureaus.