Yesterday, CNBC's Krystina Gustafson opened her article about the state of the Christmas shopping season by reporting that "procrastinators around the U.S. provided a much-needed boost to retailers" last weekend, but that "the lift was likely too little too late to salvage a slow start to the holiday shopping season." The story's headline: "Retailers cut too deep to save the holiday season."
Readers who go to the link will not see that headline now. Instead, the headline, contradicting Gustafson's contention that it was probably already too late, now reads: "Can last-minute shoppers save the holiday season?" As seen after the jump, the original downbeat headline remains at Google (which lists original headlines, and as best I can tell doesn't change them if the linked story's headline changes) and Yahoo Finance:
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A journey into the story's page source confirms that the original headline was indeed the "cut too deep" version.
One has to wonder if there was an intervention from higher up the CNBC food chain, especially given that Gustafson's writeup, which has not changed, doesn't hold out much hope:
With the deadline to get gifts under the tree creeping closer, procrastinators around the U.S. provided a much-needed boost to retailers during the final weekend before Christmas. But as steep discounts continued to percolate, analysts said the lift was likely too little too late to salvage a slow start to the holiday shopping season.
"This weekend was a really good weekend for many of the retailers … [but] a fair amount of the traffic was driven by promotions," said Steve Barr, U.S. retail and consumer sector leader at PwC. "I do not think the overall results are going to come in at the levels that were anticipated early in the season."
... After a sluggish start to the fourth quarter, including a double-digit sales decline in stores over Black Friday weekend, according to ShopperTrak, retailers had been banking on late-in-the-season shoppers to provide a last-minute lift.
... while consumers did turn out at shopping centers across the U.S., an influx of inventory caused many retailers to resort to promotional levels reminiscent of Black Friday. According to Jefferies analyst Randal Konik, Gap, Old Navy and Ann Taylor all offered 50 percent off the entire store, while Michael Kors offered the same tiered discount that it featured during Black Friday.
In the unlikely event that retailers somehow salvage their top line for revenues, it's clear that profits will still suffer significantly.
But it would appear that CNBC wants to keep hope alive — at least among news consumers who only see their story's headline on the computers, smartphones and tablets without reading any further.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
