The quadrantONE ad network offers advertisers an opportunity to buy ad space on more than 170 newspaper and broadcast sites without having to negotiate individual deals. That provides national media buyers and advertisers a way to reach local markets with one ad buy. Officials from quadrantONE noted that the online sites reach a combined 50 million unique visitors a month, citing Nielsen Online data. The quadrantONE ad network will initially employ 17 people and cover 27 of the top 30 DMA markets from three offices - New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In addition to the four owner companies, quadrantONE is open to any affiliate companies that wish to participate.

Recently, results at these major national newspapers in the U.S. have gone from bad to worse. They are desperately trying to find their way in a world where ink and paper are losing out to bits, bytes and HTML. Year over year comparisons show declines in newspaper revenues, subscribers and share of advertising budgets. While online revenues are growing as newspapers move their content online, these online revenues are not making up for lost print revenues. Even worse, growth of online advertising for newspapers appears to be slowing as advertisers spread their ad dollars across more online platforms (e.g., search, mobile, social media, local).

A weakening economy or recession won’t help as real estate; automakers and retail make up a large portion of newspaper ad sales. Even the newspapers mainstay – classified ads – has softened due to a decline in real estate and help wanted classifieds. Election-year and Summer Olympics ad expenditures may be the only bright spots in 2008.

A simplified buying channel for such a large market is a better model and may yield some of the scale benefits of the online market. It may also simplify and shave costs of ad buyers that now do not have to cover as many local markets.

The Company describes “Quadrant One“

"as the upper right quadrant on a 2x2 chart, where quality audience and national reach converge. Think of 'Audience Quality' on one axis and 'National Reach' on the other. The optimal media value is in the 'upper right', and you move into quadrantONE!

I get the 2x2 matrix image but I am thinking more of the matrix made famous by Boston Consulting Group that shows "business growth" on one axis and "Market Share" on the other. Strategists use this matrix to decide whether to invest or not in their business.

Where these newspapers once were nearly the only game in town in terms of content and worthy of additional investment, the recent transformation of media now pits them against new media, citizen journalism, search engines and social media for advertising dollars. The internet fundamentally changed the economics of production and distribution of media content and while I know these companies get that, they still own presses, delivery trucks and employ massive staffs of editors.

That is a "howling" huge cost structure to manage while facing declining demand for its product and increased competition.  Ouch. That is the wrong quadrant to be in - quadrantDOG.