» Behind the Naspers results

Behind the Naspers results

November 27th, 2009

Probing behind the Nasper’s results shows some interesting things: how bad things are in newspapers, how our TV market is changing quietly, and just how big and powerful Naspers is.

Let’s start with the TV market. Multichoice won 238 000 new subscribers in South Africa, taking them to an incredible 2,6-million houses. But it is the continued growth that is extraordinary and it includes 132 000 new households on the Compact offering.

This is going to change the face of South African television, as more and more viewers are lost to free-to-air TV. This has significance for SABC and eTV. Also, every month that passes makes it harder for the new licencees to enter the pay-TV market. The one gap that existed was in cheaper subscriptions, and Multichoice is using the delay in new arrivals to fill this gap. The hurdles to entry go up all the time, making competition less and less likely.

On print, Naspers said the following:”Globally print operations felt the full impact of economic headwinds.” Lack of commas aside, it is interesting that this is the first time in ages that they have not been able to cite the growth of Daily Sun on the upside. “Resilient” was the best they could say about print circulations. Operating profits in print were down 27% in South Africa and 42% in Brazil. Ouch!

Nasper’s market cap was R114-bn today. To give an idea where this puts them in their sector, their nearest competitor in market cap terms on the JSE is Caxton, worth R7,1-bn.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Print, TV

2 Comments Add your own

1. amandzing | January 12th, 2010 at 11:13 am

must be all those people naspers retrenched last year after closing how many titles?
2. Oupoot | January 21st, 2010 at 11:03 pm

Prof, I would love to hear your comments how the following story could potentailly disrupt / influence pay TV (who benefits tremendously from broadcasting professional sport), but also change the trends in the TV-internet markets:

http://www.theherald.co.za/article.aspx?id=521663
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5itKVyg-Yh89cXnHJowsnaeVu4AJA
http://www.cricinfo.com/ipl2010/content/current/story/445173.html

Thanks

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Anton Harber: Media

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.

What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)