By the time you’re reading this, the statistics in this episode will have changed a lot; for example, Muzak is now out of bankruptcy again. These statistics were accurate when we produced the episode:
- Viacom’s profit fell 70% in the last quarter of 2008;
- 525 magazines had gone out of business in 2008;
- 19 of the top 25 magazines saw a drop in sales in 2009;
- the number of ads purchased in magazines dropped by 26% in the first quarter of 2009;
- the publisher of the game Mortal Kombat filed for bankruptcy;
- comics publishers were worried what ebook readers like the Kindle would do to their profits;
- 2009 saw no new TV pilots being produced in New York;
- Readers Digest and dozens of other major publications cut jobs like crazy, with major news outlets like Newsweek cutting bureaus;
- there is no doubt that broadcast television networks are still considering abandoning free broadcasts in favor of subscription models;
- and Columbia Journalism School president Nicholas Lehmann’s suggestion that the New York Times might go bankrupt, while it has not yet come to pass, was made (along with several suggestions from other scholars and journalists that a trust of some sort should be set up for journalism) at the Changing Dynamics of Public Controversies conference of the J school’s communications colloquium in 2009.