Washington Post 2008 Annual Report Download - page 35

of the DBS operator with the telephone company’s own DSL service, thereby competing with the video programming and
cable modem services being offered by existing cable television systems. Satellite-delivered broadband and high-powered
WiMax services will increasingly provide competition to Cable ONE. Finally, video programming is becoming increasingly
available on the Internet, where viewers can watch programming for free, as well as access pay-per-view offerings. Cable
ONE distinguishes itself from its competition by consistently attaining very high levels of customer satisfaction.
The Washington Post competes in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area with The Washington Times, a newspaper
that has published weekday editions since 1982 and Saturday and Sunday editions since 1991. The Post also
encounters competition in varying degrees from other newspapers and specialized publications distributed in The Post’s
circulation area (including newspapers published in suburban and outlying areas and nationally circulated newspapers),
and from websites, television, radio, magazines and other advertising media, including direct-mail advertising. Express
similarly competes with various other advertising media in its service area, including both daily and weekly free-
distribution newspapers.
The websites produced by Washington Post Digital face competition from many other Internet services (particularly in the
case of washingtonpost.com from services that feature national and international news), as well as from alternative
methods of delivering news and information. In addition, other Internet-based services, including search engines, are
carrying significant amounts of advertising, and the Company believes that such services have adversely affected the
Company’s print publications and, to a lesser extent, its television broadcasting operations, all of which rely on
advertising for the majority of their revenues. National online classified advertising has become a particularly crowded
field, with competitors such as Amazon and eBay aggregating large volumes of content into national classified or direct-
shopping databases covering a broad range of product lines. Some nationally managed sites, such as Fandango and
Weather.com, also offer local information and services (in the case of those sites, movie information and tickets and local
weather). In addition, major national search engines have entered local markets. For example, Google and Yahoo! have
launched local services that offer directory information for local markets with enhanced functionality, such as mapping and
links to reviews and other information. At the same time, other competitors are focusing on vertical niches in specific
content areas. For example, AutoTrader.com and Autobytel.com aggregate national car listings; Realtor.com and
move.com aggregate national real estate listings; Monster.com, Yahoo! Hotjobs (which is owned by Yahoo!) and
CareerBuilder.com (which is jointly owned by Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune Co. and Microsoft) aggregate employment
listings. All of these vertical-niche sites can be searched for local listings, typically by using ZIP codes. Finally, several
services challenge established business models. Many of these are free classified sites, one of which is craigslist.com.In
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, DC,
metro area). Slate, The Big Money, The Root, and Foreign Policy compete for readers with many other political, lifestyle,
and business publications, both online and in print, and compete 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. In January 2009, the Hearst Corporation, owner of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, announced its intention to sell or close the paper within 60 days. The Enterprise Newspapers
are 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 newspapers; 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
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