Not So Bad In The North?

This is LONG, but it breaks down Torstar's third-quarter:

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=179360

Torstar owns the Toronto Star, a few dailies and tons of weeklies.

Some quotes that offer relief to those of us in the newspaper biz:

Operating results were stable year over year excluding the impact of foreign exchange, restructuring charges and the non-recurrence of unusual gains from property sales that occurred in the same quarter a year ago.

"Despite the challenging industry trends in newspapers, our operating results in the third quarter were stable before the impact of foreign exchange and restructuring provisions," said Robert Prichard, Torstar's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Strong growth at Metroland led our newspaper results . . . "

Total revenue, excluding the impact of foreign exchange on Book Publishing revenue, was up $2.6 million in the quarter.
EDIT: Torstar owns Harlequin (yes, the romance novel chain) and it was hit HARD with the rising Canadian dollar. That said, in re-reading the quote, you can see newspapers actually helped provide some (decent?) revenue.

Newspaper operating profits were up $2.4 million in the third quarter led by growth in Metroland's operations.

And, finally, if anyone is interested (as I am):
Torstar Corporation has scheduled a conference call for November 1, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. to discuss its third quarter results. The dial-in number in the Toronto area is 416-641-6450 and the toll free number for long distance participants is 1-877-871-4054. A live broadcast of the conference call will be available over the Internet at the News & Media Centre page on www.torstar.com and will be archived on the website following the webcast. A recording of the conference call will be available for 9 days by calling 416-626-4100 or 1-800-558-5253 and entering reservation number 212306242.