There is irony in musicians using newspapers to distribute free copies of their work. Both channels (print and packaged music) are in transition as they face considerable disruption from new models. The Sunday Times today in London comes with a CD with 13 music tracks and bonus video. For Moby it’s a way of promoting his new CD, last night, and for the newspaper it continues their addiction on Sundays to giveaways.
Unlike in Australia, the CD is in the newspaper. It’s inside a sealed plastic bag packed with a magazines and brochures. There there is a second plastic bag with other parts of the newspaper. In all, The Sunday Times is made up of seventeen inserted items. This must be an awful problem for newsagents and other retailers as well as those delivering these over-sized products.
The Sunday Times is not the only oversized Sunday newspaper here in London. Most are as bloated. It is as if they are fighting relevance by being fat, thinking that size equates to value. Even before I saw a Sunday paper today I had more up to date news on my phone and from surfing a couple of news websites. The stories in print were out of date.
While a Moby CD is nice, I doubt it is enough to get enough people to buy a newspaper. The long term solution to that can be found in core content alone.
Hi Mark
Welcome to the UK on a sunny Sunday morning. You have spotted on of the key challenges for UK newsagents, the sheer size of the papers at weekends.
Ni added an additional complication to our task this morning by late running their papers. The News of the World and Sunday Times did not leave their Broxborough print centre until 4.01 am. The cut off time for the wholesaler that supplies us is 4.00am.
Our copies did not arrive until 6.50 am. Not a lot of help really.
Steve
Sizes equals advertising revenue.
Steve