Squeeze that stone

While we are on the topic of Fairfax, it appears the powers that be at the Sun-Herald have decided to stop reviewing both opera and dance and instead use the space for more advertisements.

"The Company,” Noel Staunton, Executive Director of the Sydney Dance Company told Sydney Arts Journo, “is saddened that the Sun-Herald will no longer cover dance with either reviews of performances or feature stories on upcoming events.

“Julie Huffer is a valued member of a very small group of very fine dance writers in Sydney and it is disappointing to hear that we can no longer look forward to seeing her work in print,” he said.

Saddened is certainly a word for it. The Sydney Dance Company, Opera Australia and every other dance and opera company in the city are hopefully now reflecting on exactly how much money they are throwing at Fairfax for advertising space.

A quick flick through the ads in the Herald during the week, and then in Friday’s Metro followed by the weekend papers and Spectrum shows that the arts industry are pulling their weight more than most in advertising revenue.

A single line in that monetary black hole called the Theatre Directory costs nearly $40. When the average number of lines is around 5-10 and you add in BOLD font ($117) and a logo, it becomes a very expensive exercise. And despite research that shows, across the board and without exception, that less than 3-4% of people attend a show because of the Theatre Directory, it is a questionable investment.

Why do arts organizations continue advertising in there? The SMH website says that with the Entertainment Classifieds you “reach a big audience for your next performance with Herald Classifieds Entertainment sections”. It’s a shame they don’t look at it.

Then you have the cost of module advertising. The SMH considers that there are 24 modules per page which makes them very small spaces. Each module costs $550. If you want to specify where it is, just add on a further 30-40%. If you want it in colour you add on a minimum loading of $1,400.00

So at the moment, if you have a quarter page colour ad published on Friday and Saturday, and my maths are right (which is questionable), it is $4,400 Friday, plus $5,500 Saturday, plus $1400 for the colour you can look at paying over $10,000. Add that up by the number of advertisements per week, not just on Friday and Saturday and add it up over a year.

Of course, if you are a regular advertiser you get some discount through media buyers and bulk purchase. Maybe 50% if you are lucky which makes it $5-6,000. If you are at the SDC, you would hope to sell 120 tix before you even start covering your costs.

And then the Sun-Herald decides that its already paltry arts coverage san be streamlined even more by saving around $2000 a year in reviewer costs and one wonders who exactly is making these decisions. Things must be pretty desperate at the Sun-Herald if they have to save $2000 a year.

And don’t even start me on the arts coverage in the Spectrum with their pages and pages of imported book reviews and sporadic arts journalism... Newspapers are really getting on the nose.