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Economic news, especially affecting the stock business, dominated much of PDN's news coverage this year, but the photo industry also saw some legal landmarks, another Photoshopping scandal, and continuing disputes over photo rights.
Stock photo agencies struggled in 2007, and the troubles continue in 2008. An oversupply of images and competition from startup microstock distributors, the continuing migration of advertisers from print to the Web, and looming recession have conspired to suppress sales and revenue growth of traditional agencies, including Getty, Corbis, Jupiterimages, Masterfile and others. News photo agencies have fared no better.
The biggest news of the past year-and an unmistakable sign of hard times-was the recent $2.4 billion sale of Getty Images to Hellman & Friedman, a large private equity firm in California.
For the better part of a decade, Getty was regarded as the invincible powerhouse of the industry. It set revenue growth records quarter after quarter, amassed huge sums of cash from operations, and used its market share and cache to dictate its terms to clients, contributors, business partners and competitors alike.
Getty is still the largest stock photo agency, but changing times have hit the company hard. Revenues from RF and RM sales-the bulk of its business-have been mostly flat for months. Its share price has fallen steadily over the past two and a half years, from a high of $95.43 in November 2005 to $24.45 in late February. (Share price reflects investors' confidence about a company's future performance.)
In response, Getty has worked hard over the last year to protect its flanks, expand into new markets, and shore up its core business. It has invested heavily in the microstock business as a defensive measure. To stake claims in other new businesses, it bought a citizen photojournalism service in March 2007 and then paid $42 million for Pump Audio, a music licensing business, last June. In May it announced the acquisition of RF agency Punchstock.
To stimulate flagging RM sales in particular, Getty announced a $49 Web use license rate for any Getty image. (To appease angry contributors and photographers' trade groups, Getty soon reduced the license duration from one year to three months.) And to cut costs in slow times, Getty laid off about 100 staff last summer.