Johnson Press: Irish newspaper titles performing worse than those in Britain
The media group, whose titles in the Republic include the Leinster Leader group, Kilkenny People Holdings, Leitrim Observer and Longford Leader, has introduced a series of group-wide cost reductions which have brought net debt down by £3m (€3.5m) to £419m at the end of April 2010. It also disposed of the Tallaght Echo at the end of 2009 but has no other core strategic changes planned for its business in the Republic.
Johnson Press CEO John Fry said: “The Irish business is worse than our UK business. What we have been seeing for the UK is that the weekly take for classified adverts has been relatively stable, despite some disruption from the general election. Analysts are saying that the UK market should pick up and be fairly flat by the third quarter of this year.”
