As phone books multiply, so do consumer hang-ups (AP)

ALBANY, N.Y. - It's been a fixture on kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers for decades.

But today, the Yellow Pages is a bit too ubiquitous for some, with phone books published annually in the U.S. outnumbering the population by two to one.

While the $17 billion-a-year industry is showing remarkable resilience as other advertising-driven businesses suffer, it has become a familiar target in state legislatures, where lawmakers have tried -- unsuccessfully, so far -- to place limits on the distribution of phone books.

The Yellow Pages Association, an industry trade group, calls 2008 the industry's "most challenging year to date with regard to efforts at the state level to restrict directory publishers' ability to freely deliver phone books." Recent legislation that would empower residents to opt out of receiving phone books has failed or stalled in at least seven states.

The association has paid outside lobbyists about $50,000 so far this year to defend it in communities across the country. Two main points the group tries to get across are that phone books help promote local businesses and that they are made almost entirely from wood scraps collected at saw mills and recycled paper.

In Albany, city councilman Joseph Igoe is trying to build support for a law that would limit the distribution of phone books and require publishers to make it easy for people to halt delivery. Igoe said the issue came to his attention while campaigning door-to-door last spring and saw phone books wrapped in plastic littering sidewalks, driveways and lawns.

If Igoe succeeds in passing legislation, it will be noteworthy. Proposals have been floated -- without success -- by state legislatures in Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Washington.

Some residents in Seattle and other communities in King County, Wash., receive phone books from as many as four different publishers, said Tom Watson, a waste prevention specialist for the region. "There hasn't been a good way to opt out," he said.

Phone book publishers acknowledge that many households and businesses receive more phone directories than they need. But they call it a sign of competition in a healthy business and argue that the marketplace, not the government, should determine the number of phone books distributed.

"The ones that get used will remain, and the ones that don't will go away," said Joe Walsh, president and CEO of YellowBook USA Inc., the nation's largest independent yellow pages publisher with a circulation of about 128 million phone books in 48 states.

For years, phone companies dominated the directory business and published the only phone book available in many markets. Federal rules enacted in the late 1990s required phone companies to provide listings to independent publishers at a reasonable cost and ignited an explosion of competition.

Why?

"Because there's money in those yellow pages," said David Goddard, senior analyst of the Yellow-Pages group for Simba Information, a Stamford, Conn.-based media research company.

Last year, Yellow Pages publishers logged roughly $16.8 billion in revenue. That figure is on pace to rise to $17.2 billion this year, and $17.6 billion in 2009, according to Simba's projections.

The growth is being driven by independent publishers, Goddard said.

YellowBook, for example, logged $406.1 million in revenue during the three months that ended in June, up 9.3 percent from the same period last year. During the same period, Idearc -- Verizon's former yellow pages business which it spun off in 2006 -- reported revenue that fell 5.1 percent to $1.5 billion.

And while other advertising-driven businesses -- particularly newspapers and magazines -- have been struggling as their readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet, the old-fashioned printed copy remains king in the Yellow-Pages business.

A usage study conducted by statistical research firm Knowledge Networks/SRI estimates that Americans referred to print Yellow Pages advertisements 13.4 billion times last year, compared with 3.8 billion online listings.

"They really have to focus on print," Goddard said, noting that online ads make up less than 9 percent of yellow pages' revenue. "The Internet is the sexy new technology out there, but it isn't where most of their money is coming from. It's coming from the mom-and-pop stores that want to be in that Yellow Pages book."

Yellow Pages publishers use surveys and audits in local markets to measure how many people use their books, and many businesses often feel compelled to place ads even in those with marginal usage, Goddard said.

"If there are three publishers, including a small independent that gets maybe 20 percent of the usage, most businesses are going to want to have access to that 20 percent," he said.

Some say the excess phone books are creating a costly environmental problem for local governments. Others call them a neighborhood nuisance.

Igoe, the Albany city councilman, said he has heard lots of complaints from residents, including one from a man who said he wrecked his snowblower when he hit a bunch of phone books buried under the snow on the sidewalk.

Even residents who do want more than one phone book -- such as 81-year-old Jean Angell, who lives in Igoe's district and likes to keep a phone book by each phone in her house -- get fed up with the extras.

"They delivered two to the house across the street, and it's been vacant since last October," she said.

Yellow Pages Association spokeswoman Stephanie Hobbs said most of the country's 200-plus Yellow Pages publishers already allow people to opt out from receiving the books by phone, mail or online and provide recycling when they become outdated.

Skeptics, however, say phone book publishers don't always make it obvious or easy to opt out and the cost of blanketing neighborhoods with books they know will be discarded is cheaper than targeting distribution.

YellowBook's Walsh -- whose company has acquired 60 smaller publishers in recent years -- thinks the problem will likely sort itself out as the Yellow-Pages business continues to consolidate. Most markets don't sustain phone books from three or more publishers for very long, he said.

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On the Net:

Yellow Pages Association: http://www.ypassociation.org

Simba Information: http://www.simbainformation.com

YellowBook USA: http://www.yellowbook.com/