U.S. Consumer Time Spent With Media Fell For First Time In 2023 (mediapost.com)

As people get ready to reopen many businesses, SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies) has reviewed the evidence on the spread of COVID-19 and the efficiency of mitigation measures. One of the issues considered is washroom hygiene with a large amount of useful information on cleansing and air flows. Specifically on hand drying the documents states: Replacement of jet dryers with paper towels. Rationale: Jet air dryers can aerosolise microorganisms from poorly washed hands. Incomplete drying of hands means that contamination can persist on hands. The full SAGE document can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transmission-of-sars-cov-2-and-mitigating-measures-update-4-june-2020

Unit sales of print books fell 4.1% in the first nine months of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, at outlets that report to Circana BookScan. A weak third quarter, in which sales dropped 6.7%, accelerated the decline; for the first half of 2023, sales were down 2.7%. Sales in every major category fell, with the most notable development being the third-quarter swoon in adult fiction, where sales dropped 7.6%, leaving it 0.2% below the first nine months of 2022. (To be fair, adult fiction sales in last year’s third quarter had jumped 38.5% over the third quarter of 2021.) Graphic novels, which posted huge gains in 2021 and 2022, continued to see sales slide in 2023, with units down 24.3% in the nine-month period. Even with the big decline, graphic novels was the third-biggest adult fiction subcategory, trailing only general fiction and romance. Despite cooling in the summer, the romance genre was up 16.5% over the first nine months of 2022.

The ACMA jointly filed comments with MPA - The Association of Magazine Media, and PostCom supporting the US Postal Service's proposal for estimating the volume variability of labor costs associated with the automated distribution of letters and flats. In the comments, the groups contend that it's time "to abandon the assumption that most mail processing activities are nearly 100-percent volume variable. That assumption lacks empirical support." Calling for the Postal Regulatory Commission to approve the USPS's costing proposal, the groups also urge the Commission to look beyond it and to hold the Postal Service accountable for rightsizing its flats sorting operations in response to volume declines.