Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Jared Schramm - Roth Capital Partners.
Jared Schramm - Roth Capital Partners
Can you discern any positive impact from an ad sales perspective from the recent closure of several Conde Nast publications?
Stephen Lacy
I will ask Jack to add to my thought, but there maybe some modest impact for us, Jared, in food category, but as we have experience these sort of circumstances before I don’t think there’s a direct correlation where those ad pages automatically move to a competitive publication and that’s what our about history would say. Jack, do you want to add anything to that.
Jack Griffin
I think that’s particularly the case with respect to Conde Nast magazines, which as you know operate primarily in the luxury categories and we compete actually very little directly with Conde Nast, we’re in pretty different segments of the market. So the answer is, if there’s an effect of it’s not material.
Jared Schramm - Roth Capital Partners
Any color on the auto ad spending landscape going forward as it applies to publication and broadcasting?
Stephen Lacy
Jack, why don’t you start since you’re already commenting about what you’re seeing near term in automotive and then we’ll comeback to the broadcast side, okay.
Jack Griffin
In the national media business automotive has historically been a very small category for Meredith, which has obviously served us well in the downturn in the industry. As of late, we are seeing in the fourth quarter some encouraging activity in terms of national display advertising from certainly one of the big three.
I’m not at liberty to say which one, but when our magazines come out you’ll see it a very aggressive national marketing campaign using many of our magazines, and we’re seeing some encouraging activity in the import segment of the business as well late in calendar 2009. So certainly versus a few months ago it looks stronger and it’s encouraging.
Stephen Lacy
Statistically or factually, the decline in automotive still accounted for half of the downturn that we experienced in nonpolitical advertising on the broadcast side, but Paul, you might give a little color about, what you are hearing in the marketplace from the sellers and general managers in the individual market.
Paul Karpowicz
Really just the opposite in the local marketplace, automotive advertising is our number one category and has been our biggest category forever. What we’re seeing from quarter-to-quarter is increased improvement and we’re cautiously optimistic that even the domestic brands are coming back a little bit stronger than we would have anticipated. So we’re seeing both a combination of the domestic brands being active in addition to the imports, which have hung in better than we would have hoped.
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