Gannett.com TV, newspaper and media company
Gannett Company, Inc.
An international news and information company, Gannett Co., Inc., is based in the US, and publishes 91 newspapers, which include, USA TODAY, and other nearly 1,000 non-daily publications. Additionally, the company offers news and advertising on the internet. These are customized for the market that it serves, integrating these with its publishing operations. USA TODAY.com is one of the most popular news websites run by Gannett. The company boasts to be the largest publisher in the US.
History
The company was founded in 1906 by Frank E. Gannett and associates, and was incorporated in Delaware, USA, in the year 1923, going public in 1967. The company headquarters are situated in McLean, VA., near Washington, D.C, and has roughly 52,600 employees. There are about 10,500 shareholders of the company, being held all over the 50 states in the US, and several foreign lands.
Gannett has operations in the UK, where it operates newspaper publishing. It has a subsidiary operating as Newsquest, which is the second largest regional newspaper publisher in the UK. The publishing includes 17 daily newspapers, and more than 300 non-daily publications, which are integrated to local and classified business websites, within the national reach.
The company is also quite active in broadcasting business, operating 21 TV stations in the US, and it has a market reach of over 19.8 million households in the US. The broadcasting business section includes Captive Network, which is national news and entertainment network that delivers full motion video advertisements on the video screens located at the office towers, elevators, and select hotels in North America. The company is also involved in operating websites, offering news, entertainment, and advertising content in text and video format. It has ventured into strategic business alliances with companies, such as, CareerBuilder, LLC, Classified Ventures, ShopLocal, and Topix.net, who are essentially online investees. It is worthwhile to mention that, Gannett had a total online internet audience of nearly 21 million unique visitors in December 2005, which reached about 13.5% of the internet audience. This statistics was recorded by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The company has strategic investments in online advertising business, complementing its broadcasting and publishing business. This investment has been made through its subsidiary PaintRoll, a company which provides rich media marketing services to the online advertisers. The company has quite a few important partnership investments, such as, CareerBuilder, who advertise jobs for employment, Classified Ventures catering to auto and real estate advertisements, Topix.net, a website dealing in collection of news, ShermansTravel, providing online travel service, 4INFO, which provides mobile phone search services, etc.
The national USA TODAY was founded when, during the sixties and seventies. Gannett bought the newspapers, televisions, and radio stations across the US, under the direction of Paul Miller and Allen Neuharth. The company flourished, and by the year 1970, it has already created a place in the business world. The company at that time comprised of:
- 33 dailies.
- 12 weeklies.
- Six radio stations.
- Two television stations.
During this time Gannett absorbed quite a few of its competitors, and by 1979, it owned:
- 78 daily newspapers in 33 states and Guam
- A national news service
- Seven television stations
- Fourteen radio stations
- Outdoor advertising plants in the US and Canada
- 21 weekly news papers
- Lewis Harris and associates research
The Rise
The rise of Gannett remained unabated. During the year 1975, the company bought Multimedia, ten daily newspapers, and five television and cable TV systems. Gannett sold off Harris Louis & Associates in the following year, and then hived off the radio stations. The company acquired in the UK based Newsquest in 1999, which is the second largest regional newspaper publisher in the UK, and in 2000, Gannett took over Newscom, a regional publisher, reckoned to be the eighth largest in the UK with 99 publications, including dailies. The company also acquired 19 US newspapers from Thompson, and south-western Central Newspapers. The growth of Gannett continued, as it bought Herald Newspapers in 2002 from SMG. This included the Glasgow Herald, Sunday Herald, and Evening Times. In 2003, Gannett paid £60 million for the O'Reilly-controlled INM, comprising of 45 Greater London titles.
Outlook
Gannett went through the consumer and technological revolution that took effect in the year end of 2006. This changed the market scenario for information, where information was available to the customers how, when, and where they wanted it. To meet this change, in the early part of 2006, Gannett took a strategic position to meet the challenges, and planned to deliver on them. Thereafter, it was the turn to put the plan into action. By the end of the year, Gannett progressed to bring in transformation in the company, in both tangible and intangible ways. The shareholders of the company benefited highly out of this transformation.
The operating revenues for 2006, reached to a height of $8.03 billion, which is a significant increase of 2.5% over 2005. The earnings for diluted share for 2006 were $4.90. Gannet had results which were among the best in the business, and continued to deliver to its shareholders, while moving through the transition. Gannett geared up to take this transition through 2007 and beyond, and deliver better results to its shareholders.
Gannet defined its vision and mission, and through this vision carried out its strategic plan. The company vision focused on its customers, offering its news media to them, making available the information anytime, anywhere, in any form. Gannett's mission is to continue to transform the company to the direction of its vision, and to provide the important news and information to its customers, on demand.
Gannet is set to materialize its vision and mission, in a realistic way, attainable and flexible enough to be adapted within its operating environment. The value of USA TODAY, as a national brand, had to be recognized by the Gannett plan, and included in this plan, there are the unparallel ability of its community newspapers and television stations to deliver local information.
Eventually Gannett firmed up its plan, which is elegant and simple in understanding. It would begin by supporting its core business in its local newspapers, USA TODAY, and the television stations, as it ventures into a robust international digital business. To start with, Gannett would create Gannett Digital, an organization dedicated to customer satisfaction, and with that attracting more customers. Gannett plans to acquire more companies, and build up their operations further through partnerships and joint ventures. Gannett moved away from the concept of providing the customers with what Gannett wanted, to a policy that the customers should get what they wanted, anytime, anywhere, in any form.
Contact
- Gannett Co. Inc
-
- +1 703 284 6000
Address
- 50 W. Liberty
- Reno NV 89501 US
Additional Information
Languages
English
Community Review
- Gannett and it's practice of joining newspapers in towns causes the Detroit Newspaper Strike in 1995. The employees and supporters creative resistance to that is one of the positive future visions of how people could work together in struggle. MarkDilley
Related Domains
External Links
- Stock: GCI
- Alexa: Gannett.com
References
