Tony Ridder Revenue Quotations

The quarter was challenging. With total ad revenue up only 1 percent, and with the persistence of the soft revenue patterns across the industry for many months now (employment and real estate excepted), we continue to look to the second half for improvement.

We expect ad revenue to grow in the second half at about the same rate that it grew in the first,

We promised a strong bottom-line performance this year, and we are going to deliver, ... We have offset some tightening in the revenue environment with tough cost discipline, and that will not be a one-time event.

With ad revenue down a steady (and not worsening) 8 percent to 9 percent in each month of the quarter, we may have seen the floor.

Ad revenue growth in February and March, boosted by the early Easter, was the strongest we have seen since the first quarter of 1998. Our focus on operations, with emphasis on cost control and margin improvement, is clearly paying off.