Tony L
Administrator
One thing that occurred to me is I bet Covid 19 will hit the specialist audio magazine sector hard. From an online audio forum perspective I reckon I’m losing about 60% of my usual ad revenue (banner & link-affiliation) at present, and that is what keeps pfm afloat. I’m in the bizarre position where site traffic is very noticeably up as everyone is at home and bored, but the revenue being generated has fallen right off a cliff to the extent the site would technically no longer be financially viable if this were a permanent revenue decline. As I understand it printed magazines have very much the same business model, i.e. it is the ads that keep them afloat, not the cover-price, so I’d expect them to see similar. Plus they are far ‘heavier’ businesses with employees, rent, printing costs, maybe even loans etc to pay. I’m lucky in that pfm is really lightweight and I can personally survive effectively without a wage for a good while, plus it looks like I’ll be eligible for the government bail-out sometime in June which should give me much of the losses back (as I guess it will for the print market), but I’d not be surprised if a few print publications went to the wall before then if they are running tight asset-wise. I hope they all see it out.