The final count: 2,863 entries for News and Ad contests, smallest in 26 years; $20,041 in revenue


It’ll go down as the smallest KPA contest in at least a quarter of a century. Just edging out the 1994 contest.

The 2020 KPA Ad and KPA News contests deadline was last Friday and final figures show we’ll end up with 2,863 total entries. That will break down to 569 in the Ad Contest; 2,294 in the News Contest.

For the Advertising Contest, that’s the lowest number of entries since 1986. On the news side, the 2,294 in entries are just slightly higher than the 2,270 in 1994.

Because of COVID, because of the decline in ad revenue and with at least six newspapers having closed this year, we expected the contest to be down. Several newspapers told us they would be entering but at less numbers than in past years. And as many said they wouldn’t be entering at all.

The contests reached an apex in 2006 with a total of $40,130 in revenue, $26,755 of that in the news contest. Then the recession started showing its effects and the contests number fell for eight years, hitting its previous low in 2014 with $24,595  in income. But the two contests had shown a comeback since 2014 and then COVID came into play.

We’re preparing the entries to be judged and that will take place during November. As to when and how the results will be made public, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s pretty obvious that without the winter convention, there will not be a contest video in 2021 to show the winners so it may come down to a powerpoint presentation that we’ll share with all newspapers. The format remains to be seen as does the “show” date. Normally, we would have announced the Ad Contest winners on Thursday, January 20, at the 2021 KPA Winter Convention. And the News Contest presentation would be the following evening as we close another convention. But the pandemic has endangered any kind of plan to have a convention in January 2021.

We did have 97 separate registrations to participate in the contest but five newspapers did not end up entering and the 97 included some duplicates where the ad department registered as did the news side. We’ll end up in the neighborhood of 75 or so newspapers entering.

 

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