The Surge of Print Books Sales Continues (publishersweekly.com)

Fiscal 2022 first quarter revenues grew 2 percent to $709 million. Looking more closely at the quarter: *Digital revenues grew 24 percent to $200 million. Performance was led by strong 29 percent growth in digital advertising revenues. Meredith continues to benefit from its proprietary technology platform that brings together strong content and trusted brands, unique taxonomy, and first party data. Digital consumer revenues grew 24 percent, with performance driven by Apple News+ and performance marketing via retail partners, including Walmart, Amazon, and Target. *Magazine revenues declined 2 percent to $305 million. Magazine consumer related revenue, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of the segment's revenue, grew 6 percent, driven by newsstand and subscription revenue performance. Magazine advertising revenues declined as expected, due primarily to the food, prescription drug, and beauty categories, which continue to be adversely impacted by current economic conditions including ongoing work-from-home protocols and supply chain disruptions. *Local Media Group revenues declined 7 percent to $209 million. As expected in a non-political year, political spot advertising revenues were lower at $5 million compared to $52 million. Non-political spot advertising revenues grew 24 percent, reflecting a lack of political advertising crowd out, and driven primarily by gaming, professional services, and home categories. Retransmission revenue growth was driven primarily by annual escalations.

On the heels of last week’s House action on postal reform, the Senate this week got into the game by introducing companion legislation, the Postal Reform Act of 2021, to address USPS financial, service and transparency reforms. This bipartisan legislation, led by Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and Ranking Member Rob Portman (R-OH), is substantively identical to the legislation of the same name that was approved by the House Oversight Committee last week. The bill was introduced with strong bipartisan co-sponsorship, including nine Democrats and eight Republicans, which bodes well for committee passage and – eventually – 60 votes on final passage. Like its House counterpart, the Act focuses on key financial reforms that have been long-sought by the printing and mailing industry, including: 1) elimination the onerous retiree pre-funding requirement; and 2) integrating postal retirees’ health care into Medicare. According to Senator Portman, these two reforms alone would save $45.9 billion in savings for USPS over the next 10 years.

On June 11, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the state Department of Education overstepped its authority by attempting to force the Edmond Public School district to remove two books the state had deemed inappropriate from its school library shelves, holding that new state rules enacted last year to govern book content in the state’s public schools had no basis in law. “We conclude a local school board possesses statutory authority to maintain and control its local school library, and one aspect of this control includes discretionary selection for providing supplemental educational books and instructional material deemed appropriate by the local school board in compliance with state statutes,” the unanimous decision reads. “No statute gives the State Board of Education, State Department of Education, and Superintendent of Public Instruction the authority to overrule a local school board's exercise of discretion in applying its local community standards for books in a local school library.”