Media Outlook

The Indianapolis Newspaper Guild and the Indianapolis Star have reached an agreement that awards pay raises to most workers, including the lowest-paid, but gives parent company Gannett the right to outsource up to eight jobs.

The Guild reports that covered workers will receive raises of 2-4 percent, with the highest raises going to the lowest paid workers. (The Star imposed a 10 percent pay cut in 2009, so this is only the first step toward restoring workers’ pay to pre-recession levels.)

But the company was “unyielding” in its insistence that page design work would be outsourced out of state to be designed at a center in Louisville. “We made a strong case…that this could damage the local news product,” guild vice president Adam Yates wrote. “But it became clear that this was an edict from Gannett, The Star’s parent company, and that the quality of the product was a secondary consideration to saving money.”

Six to eight jobs will be displaced (but it’s unclear how many will be hired in Louisville, if any, to replace them).

Finally, Yates said, “The pay raises, while not fully restoring our 10 percent cuts from two years ago, were significant. Our industry is still in job and pay cutting mode. And newspaper unions around the country are still facing cuts such as the ones we took two years ago.

“That we could squeeze out even these modest raises was a testimony the efforts of our workers and our friends in the community and the breadth of our public campaign…We will continue our efforts to Save the Star.”

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Discovery Communications had a great fourth quarter, the company announced today, with net income of $337 millon on revenues of $1.1 billion.

The income was up 71 percent(!) with revenue up 11 percent. Ad sales rose 13 percent to $364 milllion in the US even as channels raised prices; same story internationally, where ad sales rose 18 percent to $160 million.

Deadline.com reports that CEO David Zaslav wouldn’t say how the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) was doing. Winfrey has “a team she has confidence in, and I have confidence in,” he said, adding that Discovery “learned a great deal about its audience” last year and is “off to a nice start in 2012.″

Comcast today reported more than a 50% increase in its overall revenues but NBCUniversal’s revenues increased only .8 percent, with broadcast down 3.7, the company said.

That’s broadcast revenues of $1.8 billion dollars and a loss of $80 million, reflecting “lower revenue as well as higher marketing costs and acquisition-related accounting revisions.”

NBCUniversal’s cable network revenue increased 5 percent to $2.2 billion for profits of $923 million.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which was bankrupt just three short years ago, is now on its second year of paying out profit-sharing checks to employees, David Brauer reports.

The award is $300 per full-time employee, or about a fourth of what it was last year ($1,163). That’s because the Strib’s pension contribution tripled.

But the fact that the company had enough money to fully fund its pension obligations, match everyone’s 401(k), and still share $300 with each of the paper’s 1,000 full-time employees is pretty encouraging.

Circulation revenue was up, newsroom staffing has remained steady, and the paper says it has more than 12,000 brand-new digital subscribers.

The downside: Ad revenue is still slipping, and newsroom staffers haven’t received a raise in three years. But if business continues this way, perhaps employees will receive some good news when their contract goes up for negotiation next January.

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee’s proposed budget would zero out state funding to Rhode Island PBS by 2014, and two bills in Oklahoma would remove state funding either next year or over the next five years, Current reports.

Meanwhile, Idaho is recommending a “no-growth” budget for Idaho Public Television and is considering removing transmitters in sparsely populated regions, Kansas nixed a bill that would have increased its public broadcasting funding, and state cuts in South Carolina that went into effect last year have taken their toll.

It’s not a pretty picture out there for public radio and TV.

The Rhode Island plan, if enacted, would take away $933,000, or a third of the station’s budget. Discussions, Current reports, continue.

State funding in Oklahoma has already dropped from $5.2 million in 2009 to $3.8 million this year; state funds now make up 41 percent of The Oklahoma Network’s (OETA’s) budget. According to OETA executive director John McCarroll, the network has already had to cut back on news production.

None of these threats are real yet—they still need to be voted on, signed into law, and so forth—except in South Carolina, where the broadcaster closed its office in Beaufort Feb. 2 and laid off two staffers. The office closure will save $180,000 a year.

The McClatchy Co. reported fourth-quarter earnings of $42 million, up from $14.8 million a year ago.

That includes a relatively modest $600,000 severance charge and a $3.4 million impairment charge.

Other highlights: Ad revenue was “only” down 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to double-digit declines for the preceding three quarters. The company is spending $20 million less on salaries than it was a year ago (thanks partly to all those layoffs). Digital ad revs now make up 15% of McClatchy’s total revenues.

Meanwhile, Time Warner Inc is reporting it had a record year, with $5.9 billion in earnings on $29 billion in revenue. Okay, so that money came from its entertainment arm rather than the publishing division but Time Inc’s magazines are still showing a profit, and a growing profit at that.

Time Inc reported a profit of $207 million for the fourth quarter, up from $171 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Elle China has doubled its frequency to twice monthly, only the second Elle edition to do so, minonline reports.

The magazine was averaging 500-800 pages per month; the size will now be reduced to 280-400 pages and the cost will be cut in half.

In a perhaps related development, the magazine is hiring but unless you’re fluent in Chinese, we wouldn’t bother.

The only other Elle edition that publishes more than 12 times a year is the original Elle in France, which has been a weekly “for decades” and remains owned by Lagardère. Ownership of Elle China transferred to Hearst Corp on Dec. 6, 2011.

And the Times company brought in an operating profit of $106.7 million, compared to $116 million a year ago.

The 406,000 figure includes the paywall at the New York Times but also subscribers to BostonGlobe.com as well as the International Herald Tribune. The Globe by itself, the Times company reported, is drawing about 16,000 digital subscribers.

It’s still unclear how many of those subscribers have paid an introductory rate, which at both BostonGlobe.com and NYTimes.com is 99 cents for the first four weeks. Personal experience shows that the Times digital circulation department is willing to extend those 99-cent promotional offers at least once.

Even still, if that means the paywall is bringing in $400,000 a month, that isn’t bad.

On to the rest of the earnings report:

The Times’ ad revenues were down 7 percent overall, though up 5 percent in digital. Ignoring the About Group, where revenues fell 25 percent, ad revenues were down only 5 percent. Circulation was up, thanks to “an increase in new orders and improved retention following the launch of its digital subscriptions.”

Digital now makes up 14.8 percent of the Times’ overall revenue.

Gannett Co, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, reported fourth quarter results Monday that delivered on Wall Street’s expectations but still showed a marked decline in advertising revenues.

The company’s total revenues for the quarter were $1.39 billion, down from $1.46 billion the year before, while net income was $116.9 million, down 32 percent from $174 million the year prior. Also, the company spent $40 million after tax on severance and other “workforce restructuring” initiatives, one reason why the company’s profits fell so dramatically.

Ad revenues at the company’s newspapers fell an average of 7 percent, while revenues at Gannett’s TV stations fell 13 percent, mostly due to a lack of political advertising.

Digital revenues, though, rose 9 percent, mostly due to growth at CareerBuilder. Digital now makes up 21 percent of Gannett’s revenues.

The New York Times Company is still seeking a replacement for CEO Janet Robinson who departed last month, and Wall Street isn’t too happy, reports Bloomberg.

A new leader is needed to bring up revenue, shore up profits and restore the Times Company’s dividend, Bloomberg writes. The company, which announces fourth-quarter results next week, is projected to report that its 2011 revenue was $2.33 billion, a decline from 2010 and the sixth straight year of declining sales.

“The stock is kind of stuck in no-man’s land,” and the absence of a CEO is part of what’s keeping it there,” one analyst told Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, Janet Robinson’s parting pay package is actually going to be around $21 million, more than previously reported.