Let me count the ways that we can compare Naspers and Avusa: the bull and the bear; the quick and the dead; diamonds and dogs. The two media companies released their annual results – for the year to March 31 2010 – in the past week, prompting many a smarty-pants media writer such as myself to group the two companies together.

It makes for a dramatic business story because, 15 years ago, the companies were of a similar size but now Naspers is an aggressive multinational that has forged an adventurous and lucrative path into the digital arena in countries such as China and Russia. The sexiest thing you can say about Avusa, however, is that it is the owner of the Sunday Times but even that has lost its cachet. Once South Africa’s biggest paper, that title now goes to the Daily Sun, owned by – you guessed it – Naspers.

So while Naspers seems savvy, Avusa appears shambolic. Naspers is bold and brave. Avusa doesn’t seem to have a plan.

But is it really fair to compare the two? Avusa is actually in the “B” league, same as Caxton, the printing firm and owners of The Citizen and a large number of community papers. Caxton’s financial year-end is at the end of June, so its annual results will be out in about September. Naspers is in the “A” league -and uniquely so in South Africa.

Click here to get a handle on the scope of the Naspers empire that spans the newspapers and magazines of Media24 (such as City Press and Rapport) to MultiChoice in SA and across the continent to Internet operations in Brazil, Eastern Europe and India. Now click here to have a look at Avusa’s company structure, which is SA-based (in fact the company pulled back a few years ago from Africa) and mostly old media: newspapers, book publishing, cinema, book stores and music.

So, separating the two companies out, what do the analysts say about them?….. Click here to read the rest of the column at Bizcommunity.

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Caxton’s The Citizen has embarked on an incredibly bold – and high-risk – move that has got publishers and editors throughout the country talking and it’s bound to shake up the Gauteng newspaper market.

As of January 1 this year, The Citizen dropped its cover price 33% from R4.50 to R3 and took its advertising rates down by about 20%. The cover-price drop comes after the paper’s “Freaky Friday” campaign in October and November last year, when a cover-price drop on Friday street sales saw a surge in circulation.  In October, when the Friday cover price was R3.50, there was a 10% increase in sales. The November cover price of R2.50 netted the paper a 25% increase in sales.

This, says  The Citizen‘s publisher, Greg Stewart, was evidence that there was price sensitivity to the cover price. On dropping the paper’s ad rates, Stewart says: “We look at media inflation and circulation every year and we made the decision this year that, in fact, we can’t be bullish with rates. First of all, look at what’s happening in the market place and, secondly, look at what’s happened to circulation. Some of the advertisers have responded very positively and have increased their ad spend with us.”

The Citizen is the only newspaper in South Africa to drop their ad rates this year, says Virginia Hollis,  joint managing director of The MediaShop media-planning firm, though some made the increase conservative.

This is a remarkable turn of events and clearly an aggressive long-term strategic push to gain market share in Gauteng, the paper’s core market. It will also see the paper go after readers of Avusa’s The Times (which is delivered free to Sunday Times subscribers) but particularly Independent Newspapers’ flagship daily, The Star… TO READ THE REST OF MY COLUMN, WHICH APPEARS AT MONEYWEB EVERY MONDAY, CLICK HERE.

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“So it’s a recession. What you going to do? Lie down and die?”

So said Terry Volkwyn, CEO of Primedia’s broadcasting division, to the company’s sales staff when the economic gloom set in earlier this year. And ad spend for the division, whose stations range from Highveld and 702 in Gauteng to Kfm and Cape Talk in Cape Town, has in fact shown a small increase this year as it has slogged away to find new business and focused on direct-response ads (advertising that calls for a response such as phone call to make a purchase).

The point, says the canny Volkwyn, is that even when we come out of the recession, the big spenders aren’t going to come rushing back with megabuck ad campaigns – that’s going to take years.

There are indications that the worst is over for the media in this recession. American advertising agency Magna said recently, for instance, that ad spend in the US bottomed out in the first half of this year and it will slowly begin to pick up next year though it will remain in negative territory. In South Africa we also have the Soccer World Cup to look forward to, which should boost the coffers somewhat in the ad-spend department.

Even the beleaguered Irish owners of South Africa’s Independent newspapers saw a rise in Independent News & Media’s (INM) share price when it released its dismal interim results recently – because the drop in revenue wasn’t as awful as the analysts expected… TO READ MY FULL COLUMN, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB

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Is Independent News & Media’s  second largest shareholder, Denis O’Brien,  sending out the message that the Irish are going to sell off assets? Among these assets are the Independent papers in South Africa that include The Star, Pretoria News, The Daily News, The Mercury, The Cape Times and The Argus.

The Irish parent group has run up a 1.4-billion euro debt but has negotiated a financial freeze till June 26 that stops lenders claiming on a 200-million euro bond. There has been much speculation that the Independent will sell off overseas operations such as here and in New Zealand  to save their British newspapers.

The names of Caxton, Media24 and Thabo Mbeki’s brother, Moeletsi, have been touted around as interested buyers in SA but it seems unlikely to me that the Competition Commission would approve  a wholesale transfer of assets to a big player like Media24.  More likely that the papers will be sold off separately.  Sunday Times owners Avusa would love to lay their hands on a Durban or Cape Town newspaper, I’m sure, seeing as they are big only in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape. Anyway it plays, it’ll be an exciting shake up for the South African media.

Reuters reports that O’Brien says he would like to see The Independent in London survive but that it must make a profit (which it never has). The reporter reads this as a turnaround on an earlier statement by O’Brien that the newspaper should be sold. Read the full story here.

Call me cynical but I read this as the horse-pill salesman turned cellphone tycoon as saying: I’ve had enough of this media lark, the journalists are a pain and I want to dump it and give Tony a boot up the bum at the same time.

Especially when you read this quote in the Reuters story:

I don’t believe in having media outlets just for the benefit of journalists and great writers… It has to be profitable for shareholders.

Put that in your pen and smoke it, you contrary hacks!

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Here’s a tasty bit of media gossip from veteran journalist and Rhodes’s head of the media department,  Prof Guy Berger. There talk that  interested buyers have already been in touch with one of the main shareholders of Independent Newspapers in Ireland. Also, that the name of Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of  former president Thabo Mbeki, is being put about as an interested buyer. As well as Media24 and Caxton!

Read the Prof’s piece here at the M&G. The opinion piece is actually about the future of the SABC so you’ll have to read quite far down.

Now there’s a thing! We all know that Independent Newspapers in the UK is in a spot of trouble so they may well decide to sell off the South African assets, which include both daily English papers in Cape Town and Durban as well as The Star and the Pretoria News.

There is a fear that  pro-Zuma buyers might wish to buy and bend the Independent newspapers to  their will but then Tokyo Sexwale is the chairman of the Avusa board and the Avusa papers don’t seem to have  pressure coming down on them.

And the Irish didn’t do much for the Independent papers except for rabid cost-cutting , destroying staff morale and bleeding skills.

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