Australian newsagents might spare a thought for New York newsstand colleagues. For years the News Corp. owned New York Post was 25 cants. Two weeks ago, having grown circulation by 50% over five years or so, the cover price was doubled. Two weeks on and with sales reportedly crashing, News has retreated to the 25 cent price point. Crains has an excellent story on what happened.
Newspaper publishers are on the record saying that cover price is not key to their overall revenue model. Cover price primarily funds the supply chain. Retail Newsagents rely on the cover price as their only source of revenue – cover price is crucial to us. That it has not kept pace with CPI over the last 10 years makes investing capital in newspaper fixtures challenging.
I hope we don’t experience New York like price wars here. If guess we do with some of the home delivery deals but, overall, newsagents are insulated from most of the discounting.