Advertising Age‘s Jeremy Mullman observes the obvious is noting that the L.A. Times, “desperate for new revenue sources as it’s beset by declining circulation and advertising sales, is aggressively angling for the $50 million award-lobbying ad market long dominated by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter with its print version of “The Envelope.”
“I can’t put out an 800,000-circulation daily broadsheet, but they’re able to cover, in print, almost exactly the same subjects we cover,” Variety publisher Charles C. Koones tells Mullman. “Given the realities of their business, they have to look at every possibility, and it makes sense that they’d look at this.”
“Times execs say moving ‘The Envelope’ into print is part of a larger initiative to make the paper as dominant in entertainment as The Washington Post is in politics. “This is the Times doing more of what it has done, and more of what it should have done,” said John T. O’Loughlin, the paper’s senior vp marketing, planning and development.”
In other words, the Times was slacking before?