This summary is based on the first quarter fiscal 2008 earnings call conducted by Gannett Inc. (GCI: chart) on April 21, 2008.

Management:

- Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer: Craig A. Dubow
- Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President: Gracia C. Martore

Key Investors Issues

- Earnings dropped 7% to $191.8 million or 84 cents a share.
- Revenues were $1.7 billion, down 8.4% from $1.8 billion in 2007.
- Shares repurchased totaled 1.5 million.

First Quarter Highlights

Earnings amounted to $191.8 million or 84 cents a share, down 7% from $210 million or 90 cents in the prior year on decreasing revenues.

- Results include a $25.5 million pretax gain on the sale of excess land adjacent to the headquarter business in McLean.
- Efforts to control cost and create efficiencies resulted in year-over-year reduction in total operating expenses of over $100 million, which was a decline of almost 7%.
- Total operating revenues were $1.7 billion, down 8.4% from $1.8 billion in 2007 due to a weaker economic environment that negatively affected advertising demand.
- Retail advertising was almost 8% lower, national advertising was unchanged, and classified finished down in the mid-teens.

For U.S. community publishing, classified advertising continues to be hindered by the real estate slowdown, the real estate and employment impacted the most in the quarter.

- The divergence between the results for the properties in Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada and those in other parts of the country continued as classified categories were again roughly two to three times worse in those states.
- Results from operations in the U.K. were stronger relative to U.S. community publishing, as their operating revenues were down in the mid-single-digits.
- However, the economic slowdown in the latter half of March tempered results of Newsquest as well, particularly the real estate and employment categories.

USA Today’s advertising revenues were over 2% higher as the top advertising categories, entertainment, travel, and financial, were all up significantly.

- Broadcasting segment revenues were 7% lower and included about $5.5 million in politically related advertising but that was not enough to overcome the absence of the Super Bowl related ad revenue that benefited the CBS affiliates in 2007.
- The firm is well-positioned for what appears to be an unprecedented level of advertising associated with the elections in the fourth quarter and the Summer Olympics in Beijing will boost results.
- Digital revenues company-wide contributed to results and despite the economic conditions, online revenues were up 6.5% overall.

The domestic online revenues increased 3% and online results in the U.S. were tempered by a decline in employment advertising that masked the strong growth in auto as well as retail and national advertising.

- Online revenue at Newsquest was up over 32% in pounds and broadcasting was 11.2% higher.
- In March, domestic websites had 24.8 million unique users and reached 15.1% of the Internet audience.
- In the U.K., Newsquest’s online audience totaled 6.6 million unique visitors, with over 94 million page impressions.
- At CareerBuilder, growth in revenue and traffic continued and North American network revenue was up about 3%.

Traffic for the network averaged 23.7 million unique visitors, a 9% increase compared to last year as they continue their international expansion as well.

- Together with Classified Ventures, these partnerships continued to deliver and remain a key building block of the digital strategy.
- Shares repurchased totaled 1.5 million.

Strategic Dynamic:

- The firm is in the midst of a deep transformation to meet head on the fundamental changes in the way people consume news and information.
- These changes are taking hold and the firm is making real progress in developing a world-class digital business, while enhancing the core products.
- The firm is improving the publishing properties and TV stations every day, both in the way it gathers and manages content as well as other ways that this is distributed.
- It is extending reach in local markets through a variety of products and platforms, digitally and in print.

On the digital front, the strategy is to begin with the customer, the advertiser, by finding out what they want and need and find a way to deliver it.

- The goal for digital is to continue to evolve that content, develop the audience, and then segment it based on who they are and where they are.
- At the same time, Gannett is creating better ways to deliver advertising to consumers and announced the creation of quadrantONE.
- This partnership with Tribune, Hearst, and The New York Times Company is a national digital ad distribution network with dedicated inventory to sell.
- This means quadrantONE now has access to more than 250 newspaper and broadcast websites and more than 70 million unique monthly visitors.

Work has started on the development of an ad serving platform that will help keep close tabs on the ad inventory and ad campaign scheduling.