Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Paul Steep – Scotia Capital.
Paul Steep – Scotia Capital
Leonard, maybe you can talk just a little bit on the first one in terms of the outlook, not to get too focused on the near term but just how things have fared thus far in October and hopefully if we’ve seen any sort of stabilization in the last week or two many around specialty TV and then the publishing side of things.
Leonard Joshua Asper
I’ll start and then turn it to Kathy. I think overall the trends continue which is that digital and specialty channel revenue is good, strong and publishing revenues a little more challenging and conventional is the real tough one. I think Kathy, looking over the last several weeks the conventional side has stabilized a little more after a tougher September but do you want to comment a little bit?
Kathleen A. Dore
We’re seeing strong growth in the current quarter in specialty, not quite what it was last year but certainly double digit growth. On the conventional side, we’ve seen the actual money coming in September and October above levels of last year. July and August money coming in for July and August the first quarter were quite a bit below so from that standpoint the conventional revenue situation does seem to be stabilizing.
Leonard Joshua Asper
I think it’s safe to say the conventional revenues market is down a little bit overall. I think the overall market is down and we are down in conventional pacing the quarter. I think there are some bookings that are coming in for January and have come in recently that are encouraging but we’re obviously not going to – everything is very late as usual. The visibility is much reduced from what it was.
There’s money, as we understand it, waiting on the sidelines and I think there’s just a lot of psychological issues with people and they’ve held back for obviously several months now. So, we’re seeing some signs, we signed some major deals for January but we are running behind for the quarter in conventional as well as in specialty. Dennis, do you want to comment on publishing?
Dennis Skulsky
On the publishing it’s first off with the backdrop to last year’s quarter we had one of our best quarters in recent memory last year. But, we are caught in this attitudinal think of what’s going on in the economy. Clearly, the real estate category for us has been a challenge in this first quarter. We’re also continuing to see some of the challenge around the classified working and career business.
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