The four year old NSDP program run by the PBL owned Network Services is to close by June, newsagents have been advised today. NSDP had tremendous potential had it been run well. It sought to leverage spare capacity in the newsagent home delivery infrastructure for the delivery of subscription magazines. It’s main competitor was Australia Post.
For much of the life of the program my newsagency had seven NSDP territories. We had people on the road most days of the week delivering magazines. I know from this experience that a key problem with NSDP was what newsagents were paid. Despite early promises from Network to support infrastructure costs, NSDP was loss making for many participants, myself included.
A key cost to newsagents was time spent sorting product. Rather than allowing newsagents to address pre-bagged magazines to be delivered, they arrived from Network already addressed. Newsagents then spent hours sorting the product into a delivery sequence. This would have been easy and cheap to fix. I suspect it the various solutions proposed to Network were not taken up because there were other problems with the subscription delivery offering.
My theory, based on no evidence, is that the contracts with publishers caused problems for Network – there was not enough money in the contracted delivery fee for them and for newsagents and that, as a result of poor returns, newsagents were pulling out. Indeed, we resigned months back when we saw that Network was not going to agree to a price structure which at least covered costs.
Network’s intention was honourable. The best asset newsagents had/have is their national network.