Nashville Banner

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The front page from a 1974 issue of The Nashville Banner

The Nashville Banner was a daily newspaper of Nashville, Tennessee which ceased publication in 1998. It was long a voice of conservative viewpoints in contrast to its liberal morning counterpart, The Tennessean, although these views were greatly moderated in the paper's twilight years.

The first edition of the Nashville Banner was published on April 10, 1876. It was begun as a voice for the railroads and other interests in comparison with other area papers of the time which tended to take the viewpoint of workers and unions. It was long controlled by Nashville's influential Stahlman family.

The Banner was an evening paper, which at one time published as many as five editions (first, second, market final, sports final, and sunset final), although these were later consolidated into three editions, and eventually, two. For many years it was in a superior financial condition to its competitors, and in fact, when the rival Tennessean went bankrupt and almost had to cease publication, the Banner assisted in its purchase by the Evans family, who saved it. The Tennessean and the Banner entered into what was one of the first joint operating agreements in the U.S. in 1937. Under this agreement, which became a common model for many other cities over the next half-century, the papers maintained editorial independence and remained separate as news-gathering organizations. However, they were printed on the same presses, distributed by a common agent, and had a consolidated classified advertising department. They were fierce competitors in the realm of news and ideas, but no longer business competitors in the truest sense.

This arrangement stood both papers in good stead for many years. However, the Banner began to suffer in the post-World War II era from the slow loss of readership that became common to most U.S. evening papers, which was largely attributed to the rise of television. In the early 1970s the Stahlmans sold the Banner to the Gannett Co. Gannett published it for several years, but in 1979 announced that it was selling the Banner back to local owners and assuming publication of the Tennessean.

Although it took almost twenty years, this was the death knell for the Banner. It was now clearly inferior in resources to its morning counterpart, and its circulation continued to shrink. In the 1980s Gannett insisted on renegotiation of the joint operating agreement to its benefit, and the Banner had little choice but to comply. Another reason for the weakness of the Banner was its lack of a Sunday edition comparable to the Tennessean's, which it had given up in the formation of the joint operating agreement. It had since always published on a six-day schedule, and as weekday papers, especially evening weekday papers, continued to decline, it did not have this profit center to draw upon. The Banner switched its Saturday edition for a while to a single, morning edition in direct competition with the Tennesseean, then announced that it was terminating its Saturday edition entirely.

During this time, the Banner began to take far more moderate positions on issues on its editorial pages, although it generally remained more conservative than the Tennessean in most areas. It was in the contradictory situation of probably becoming more-respected by people, especially those in the journalism community, at the same time that it was becoming less-read. The end occurred when the Gannett Co. made the publishers of the Banner a large offer to terminate the joint operating agreement. The offer was more than any profit that could have probably been made by the continued publication of the Banner, so it ceased to exist, with a small portion of its staff and a few of its most popular features being absorbed by the Tennessean. Interestingly, this was not considered by the Justice Department to be an antitrust violation, but when Gannett attempted to do the same thing with its Honolulu Advertiser and the evening paper in that joint operating agreement, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, only a few months later, it was prosecuted as such, the merger was forestalled, and both papers still operate.

Among the Banner's last big stories was the closing of Opryland USA in late 1997. The Banner's final edition was published on Friday, February 20, 1998. The announcement to close was made public the previous Monday, February 16.

The archives of the Nashville Banner were donated to the Nashville Public Library. The collection features the entire archive, a vending machine with the final edition still displayed in the window, the many awards the paper won over the years, various trinkets from the paper's offices, and a bronze statue of a paperboy selling the Banner which was originally placed on the plaza in front of the Tennessean/Banner offices. The archive is located at the downtown Nashville Public Library on Church Street and is open to the public.

[edit] Circulation history

A bit of gallows humor occasionally heard in the Banner newsroom, as a new obit came in, was: "There goes another reader." Figures from the newspaper's quarterly circulation audits illustrate how true the jibe became through the course of the 1990s, with readership dropping even as Nashville grew dramatically in population.

Calendar Quarter Ended	Avg. paid circ.	% change	cumul. change
December 29, 1991	61,746	n/a
March 29, 1992	60,768	-1.58%
June 28, 1992	59,282	-2.45%
August 7, 1992	58,089	-2.01%
September 27, 1992	59,120	*Sat. edition dropped
December 27, 1992	59,949	1.40%	-2.91%
March 28, 1993	58,416	-2.56%
June 27, 1993	56,579	-3.14%
September 26, 1993	56,447	-0.23%
June 27, 1993	56,579	0.23%
September 26, 1993	56,447	-0.23%
December 26, 1993	56,021	-0.75%	-9.27%
March 27, 1994	56,280	0.46%
June 26, 1994	55,052	-2.18%
September 25, 1994	55,138	0.16%
December 26, 1994	54,084	-1.91%	-12.41%
March 27, 1995	52,769	-2.43%
June 26, 1995	52,793	0.05%
September 25, 1995	51,180	-3.06%
December 31, 1995	50,814	-0.72%	-17.70%
March 31, 1996	49,075	-3.42%
June 30, 1996	47,722	-2.76%
September 30, 1996	46,164	-3.26%
December 29, 1996	44,711	-3.15%	-27.59%
March 30, 1997	44,031	-1.52%
June 29, 1997	42,660	-3.11%
September 28, 1997	41,541	-2.62%
December 27, 1997	40,466	-2.59%
December 28 1997 to February 20, 1998	40,633	0.41%	-34.19%