Booking Losses

The book fair in Frankfurt and a media summit in Munich survey the damage of the global economic downturn

The Frankfurt Book Fair, whose PR material never hesitates to remind you that it is still the world's largest, wraps up on Monday. Two days later, top reps from Germany's major media companies will converge in Munich for a summit of sorts called the Medientage, or "Media Days". Both events this year have turned into exercises in damage assessment.

It's been a rotten year all over, but the post-boom crunch has been especially tough on the media business (see The Incredible Shrinking Mediascape). Just in time for the three-day conference, the latest depressing numbers are out. In the first half of 2002, the TV ad market shrank by another 7.2 percent. Ads fell off 5 percent for magazines and 6.5 percent for newspapers. But what's really hurting the papers is the drop in classified ads: a whopping 50 percent.

Little wonder that the dailies keep laying off staff layer by layer, but rumors that the publishers of one of Germany's most respected papers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, may file for bankruptcy are a shock. The Süddeutsche Verlag has vehemently denied them, hopefully justifiably so. The darkest news of all, though, may be that few see a turnaround in the near future. Hans-Hermann Tiedje, who once ran Bild, Germany's successful tabloid, is now a media consultant who's telling his clients that he doesn't see an upswing worth getting excited about for another two years at least.

German book publishers are a tad more optimistic, despite having to record their first drop in sales in postwar history, a 1.2 percent decline for the first eight months of 2002. But they're projecting a 2 percent bounce back for 2003. All in all, even with 6,375 exhibitors from 110 countries, this year's Fair was 4 percent smaller than the last. But one area of the book business is actually booming: online sales, which have risen more than 21 percent over last year.

It may seem odd to many, then, that Bertelsmann is looking to dump its online store on the highest bidder, even though BOL is second in the German market only to Amazon. But then, Bertelsmann has been full of surprises lately, booting its CEO, new economy booster Thomas Middelhoff, in August and, early last week, releasing a report admitting that the company has been lying for five decades about its past. Instead of being shut down by Nazis in 1944, Bertelsmann readily cooperated with them. A shift from publishing prayer books to pulp lit for Nazi soldiers jacked sales up 2000 percent. If the old adage that war is good for business still holds water, and if George W. Bush isn't bluffing, there may be a dingy sort of hope yet for the media industry.

Elsewhere

There are two new substantial reads at Wim Wenders's site: the transcript of the panel discussion WIRED in Cannes: The Promise of Broadband that took place this summer and an extensive interview with the director.

Martin Heidegger is the theorist par excellence of the digital future," writes Arthur Kroker. Novelist A.S. Byatt travels the continent, asking everyone she meets, What is a European?.

John Payne explores the "sound-plays" of Heiner Goebbels.