Washington Post 2007 Annual Report Download - page 40

addition, the role of the free classified board as a center for community information has been expanded by “hyper
local” neighborhood sites, such as dcurbanmom.com (which provides community information to mothers in the
Washington, D.C., metro area). Some free classified sites, such as Oodle and Indeed, feature databases populated
with listings indexed from other publishers’ classified sites. Google Base is taking a somewhat different approach and
is accepting free uploads of any type of structured data, from classified listings to an individual’s favorite recipes. For its
part, Slate competes for readers with many other political and lifestyle publications, both online and in print, and
competes for advertising revenue with those publications, as well as with a wide variety of other print publications and
online services, plus other forms of advertising.
The Herald circulates principally in Snohomish County, WA; its chief competitors are the Seattle Times and the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, which are daily and Sunday newspapers published in Seattle and whose Snohomish County
circulation is principally in the southwest portion of the county. Since 1983 the two Seattle newspapers have
consolidated their business and production operations and combined their Sunday editions pursuant to a joint
operating agreement, although they continue to publish separate daily newspapers. TheEnterpriseNewspapersare
distributed in south Snohomish and north King Counties, where their principal competitors are the Seattle Times and The
Journal Newspapers, a group of monthly controlled-circulation newspapers. Numerous other newspapers and
shoppers are distributed in The Herald’s and The Enterprise Newspapers’ principal circulation areas. La Raza del
Noroeste’s principal competitors in its circulation territory are the weekly Spanish-language newspapers El Mundo and
Seattle Latino, although it also competes with various other Spanish-language media. The chief competitor for the
Snohomish County Business Journal is the Puget Sound Business Journal, with parenting publication Parent Map serving
as the principal competitor for Seattle’s Child.
The circulation of The Gazette Newspapers is limited to Montgomery, Prince George’s and Frederick Counties and
parts of Carroll County, MD. The Gazette Newspapers compete with many other advertising vehicles available in their
service areas, including The Potomac and Bethesda/Chevy Chase Almanacs, The Western Montgomery Bulletin, The
Bowie Blade-News, The West County News and The Laurel Leader, weekly controlled-circulation community news-
papers; The Montgomery Sentinel, a weekly paid-circulation community newspaper; The Prince George’s Sentinel, a
weekly controlled-circulation community newspaper (which also has a weekly paid-circulation edition); and The
Frederick News-Post and Carroll County Times, daily paid-circulation community newspapers. The Southern Maryland
Newspapers circulate in southern Prince George’s County and in Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s Counties, MD,
where they also compete with many other advertising vehicles available in their service areas, including the Calvert
County Independent and St. Mary’s Today, weekly paid-circulation community newspapers.
In 2004, Clarity Media Group, a company associated with Denver businessman and billionaire Philip Anschutz,
bought The Montgomery, Prince George’s and Northern Virginia Journals, three community newspapers with a
combination of paid and free circulation that had been published in suburban Washington, D.C., for many years by a
local company. In February 2005 Clarity Media Group relaunched The Journal newspapers as The Washington
Examiner, a free newspaper which is being published six days a week in northern Virginia, suburban Maryland and
Washington, D.C., zoned editions, each of which contains national and international as well as local news. The
Company believes that the three editions of The Washington Examiner are currently being distributed primarily by ZIP-
code targeted home delivery in their respective service areas. The Washington Examiner competes in varying degrees
with The Gazette Newspapers, Express and The Washington Post. In March 2006 Clarity Media Group began
publishing The Baltimore Examiner, a similar type of free-distribution newspaper for the greater Baltimore, MD,
metropolitan area.
The advertising periodicals published by Greater Washington Publishing compete with many other forms of advertising
available in their distribution area, as well as with various other free-circulation advertising periodicals.
El Tiempo Latino competes with other Spanish-language advertising media available in the Washington, D.C., area,
including several other Spanish-language newspapers.
The Company’s television stations compete for audiences and advertising revenues with television and radio stations,
cable television systems and video services offered by telephone companies serving the same or nearby areas, with
direct broadcast satellite services, and to a lesser degree, with other media such as newspapers and magazines.
Cable television systems operate in substantially all of the areas served by the Company’s television stations where they
compete for television viewers by importing out-of-market television signals; by distributing pay-cable, advertiser-
supported and other programming that is originated for cable systems; and by offering movies and other programming
on a pay-per-view basis. In addition, DBS services provide nationwide distribution of television programming
(including in some cases pay-per-view programming and programming packages unique to DBS) using digital
transmission technologies. In 1999, Congress passed the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, which gives
24 THE WASHINGTON POST COMPANY