Gannett Newspaper Chain's Pre-21st Century Hidden History--Revisited (Part 2)

"...According to the book The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian, `The profit margin on some Gannett papers was astonishing—70 to 50 percent a year.'...”

Much of Gannett’s pre-21st-century mass media empire was purchased, historically, via $1.5 billion in Wall Street money in the 1970s and 1980s—after many of the antiwar underground newspapers of the late 1960s, like the Lower East Side’s East Village Other (EVO) and RAT, had folded due to a combination of economic and political pressures. In 1967, only 28 U.S. newspapers had been controlled by Gannett. In the 1970s, 46 additional daily newspapers were bought by Gannett. As its former, now-deceased chairman of the board, Al Neuharth, noted in his Confessions Of An S.O.B. book: “In a single decade—1970 to 1980—Gannett went from number seven to number one, the nation’s biggest newspaper company.”

In the 1980s, another 23 more daily newspapers were added to Gannett’s stable. Many of the newspapers Gannett gobbled up in the 1970s and 1980s had previously been family-owned media operations. Between 1970 and 1989, all of the radio and television stations that Gannett owned until the early 21st-century were also acquired.

Among the largest mass media purchases made by Gannett during its $1.5 billion buying spree were the following:

1. In 1979, Gannett spent $362 million [equal to over $1.5 billion in 2023] to acquire the seven television stations, three radio stations and Cincinnati and Oakland newspapers of Combined Communications—as well as Combined Communications’ 38,000 outdoor billboards, and 2. In 1985 and 1986, Gannett spent $1.2 billion [equal to over $3.3 billion in 2023] to gobble up the Des Moines Register & Tribune, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Detroit News and the Detroit News’ Washington, D.C. television station.

Gannett’s 1970s and 1980s drive to control more newspapers in single-newspaper U.S. cities and towns proved to be enormously profitable—as did its historical preference for utilizing non-unionized employees to operate newly-purchased local newspaper monopolies. According to the book The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian, “The profit margin on some Gannett papers was astonishing—70 to 50 percent a year.” And these net earnings, according to former Gannett Chairman Neuharth’s Confessions Of An S.O.B. book, “made Gannett a darling of Wall Street.”

According to Neuharth (who despite “retiring” as Gannett’s head in 1989—still received $200,000 [equal to over $448,000 in 2023] a year in 1991 from its USA Today national newspaper for being a “consultant” and a columnist), between 1967 and 1987 Gannett’s annual gross income jumped from $186 million to $3.1 billion [equal to over $8.3 billion in 2023] and its annual net income jumped from $14 million to $319 million [equal to over $856 million in 2023]. Yet despite Gannett’s profitability, 80 percent of Gannett’s newspaper employees were still, historically, non-unionized in 1991.

The Gannett Company had also, in September 1981, formed a partnership with Public Broadcasting Service [PBS]’s then-evening tv news show anchors, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, to, historically, produce television news, specials, documentaries and cable programs in the 1980s.

Fifty percent of this 1980s historical partnership, MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, had been owned by the Gannett Company, 25 percent by MacNeil and 25 percent by Lehrer. According to the white Canadian-born and raised immigrant journalist MacNeil in 1981, under his and Lehrer’s agreement with the Gannett Company, Gannett “would fund program ideas we three collectively agree should be produced.”

The Gannett Company’s chairman of the board and president in 1981, Al Neuharth, then characterized Gannett’s decision to form a 1980s commercial partnership with the publicly-funded PBS tv evening news sow’s then-anchors as “a marvelous opportunity to add a significant dimension to our development of electronic news and information capability,” according to the Sept. 12, 1981 issue of the New York Times. At the same time, the purportedly non-commercial PBS’s evening tv news show’s then-co-anchor MacNeil also explained one of his reasons for then becoming, historically, a partner with one of the biggest commercial mass media conglomerates in the world: “Since we didn’t take a vow of poverty and chastity when we joined public television, it would be nice if we could also make some money.”

And by 1988, PBS’s then-named “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” evening tv news show also then received a “financial commitment of $57 million [equal to around $147 million in 2023] through corporate support of AT&T, Pepsico and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation” in the late 1980s; while the Gannett Company’s gross annual income exceeded $3 billion [equal to over $6.7 billion in 2023] and its net income per year approached $400 million [equal to nearly $900 million in 2023] by the early 1990s.