I have received more calls from South Australian newsagents concerned about the risk to retail traffic as a result of the decision by News Ltd owned Advertiser Newspapers to take over control and management of home deliveries. More than half heard about the move for the first time through this blog. As I outlined in my blog post yesterday, retail newsagencies are finely tuned businesses – we rely on traffic for a broad range of purposes – each supporting and feeding off the other. Take part of that away and the balance is impacted.
Take a country town newsagency which processes newspaper home delivery payments from around 150 customers each week and with 90% of these for Adelaide Advertiser only accounts. many of these are customers won by the newsagent. The Advertise plans to take these accounts from the newsagent and thereby provide one reason for these customers to not visit the newsagency. The knock-on impact on other sales and therefore the goodwill value of the business could be significant.
This planned change needs to be put on hold while all newsagents are brought into the discussion and while appropriate authorities are consulted. I would hope that the ACCC might have a view on this as well as the Minister for Small Business in the South Australian Government.
Newsagents could consider getting together themselves to establish a committee to take the matter further. There is nothing stopping them working collectively on a uniform approach – in the absence of leadership elsewhere on this issue.
I hope that News Ltd nationally prevails on their South Australian outpost to delay implementation while fair and open consultation proceeds.