Newsagency awards dinners should be relaxing events with the focus solely on the award nominees and recipients. On this one night of the year, nothing else should matter, nothing else should pull focus from the newsagents to be recognised.
Unfortunately, the VANA awards dinner on Saturday for a while was like a newsagents meeting with a couple of business presentations. The awards dinner was the wrong forum and the content not as noticed as a result.
Stephen Kaye, Circulation Director of News Limited’s Herald and Weekly Times delivered a speech about changes to the newspaper distribution model. He started by criticising talk in some quarters that News Limited was in crisis. Um, Stephan, that comment was directed at me and a blog post I published on February 21. Immediately after the post News used several channels to any the claim, they used newsagency associations to put out their spin. I’ve not officially heard from News Limited. I stand by what I said including this…
There is a crisis gripping News Limited on the future of newspaper home delivery in Australia. My understanding is that there is disagreement between circulation executives in some News Limited state offices and their bosses at Holt Street in Sydney on the future model of newspaper home delivery and whether newsagents are part of the model.
The crisis in had its genesis in 2009 when somewhere between 100 and 300 newsagents handed their newspaper home delivery businesses back to News, claiming that they were not financially viable.
I didn’t make it up. People in News said it to me.
Why Stephen Kaye felt he needed to comment on this at the VANA awards dinner months after I made the statement is beyond me. Odd.
But Stephen was just starting his speech – he went on to tell newsagents that change was coming and that it would start in Queensland where more newsagents have handed their runs back. Reading between the lines, one could take Stephen’s words to suggest that there is a crisis in Queensland.
I wish I had been able to take notes as the speech had plenty of information which newsagents would find valuable, information they would want to reflect on away from an awards dinner environment.
In his speech, Stephen Kaye said that Victorian newsagents are not waiting for the News Limited changes in Queensland to come to Victoria. He observed than some Victorian changers were not what News Limited wanted. Hang on, News Limited has been at this change thing for close to three years, watching what is happening in Victoria among newsagents and he says that some of the changes newsagents have been leading may not be what News Limited wants. That’s odd.
Are newsagents is a master servant relationship or is this the era of deregulation.
All newsagents want is contracts so that they can go about commercially structuring themselves as they consider mot appropriate. It looks to me like News is trying to control too much of the operation. This is not what one should see in a deregulated marketplace.
If I was running VANA I’d ask for a copy of Stephen Kaye’s speech so it could be published to all newsagents. It contains information all newsagents need to hear. I would also bring into the open for all newsagents as a matter of urgency open discussion about what is known of the News Limited plans. I’d actively engage with South Australian newsagents who have gone through aspects of the News Limited plans already. Their experiences would be invaluable despite what some in News might say. South Australian newsagents have a lot to share with their eastern seaboard counterparts.
While I disagree with their process, I agree with the overall goal of what News Limited is working on. The problem for newsagents is that the company is pursuing considerable change in its relationship with newsagents while at the same time finally addressing the state based silo management style in which it has operated for decades. News in a year or two will look very different to the company we know today.
I suspect the scope of change facing newsagents is far more than any but a small few expect.
News needs to stop jumping at shadows and trying to discredit anyone they think is challenging their position.
The VANA awards dinner was good. I appreciated the opportunity to catch up with plenty of newsagents as I did in Hobart a week earlier. Brisbane next week…
Mark, you are a courageous newsagent and a courageous mentor to newsagents all over Australia.
I applaud your honesty in your comments above and I agree with you about the awards dinner.
The SA awards dinner was used to give suppliers awards and the agents got lost in the process. It certainly needs revamping.
The changes in SA have been gigantic. I can’t recall a single sale of a round since migration occurred. Migration being the “taking back” of the customer and putting them on subscription copies of the paper.
If I had still been a distribution agent I would have been shouting from the rooftops but I was fortunate enough to sell my round some years before.
I still believe the ANF should have fought the issue here in SA and I also strongly believe that the customer belongs to the newsagent and the paper belongs to the publisher. WHY HAS THIS NEVER BEEN TESTED BEFORE????
If a person comes into your shop and asks you to deliver a paper to their property surely that customer has been procured by the agent and is therefore part of the agents’ onselling of his business.
To have “migrated” those customers is surely breaking a privacy of the customers to not have their names and addresses given to any other person/association/business for the purpose of a business transaction?
TOO LATE BECAUSE IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED AND WILL SURELY HAPPEN ALL OVER OZ NOW.
The only agents left in SA with their “own customers” are the regional boys/girls and they got to keep their ownership status purely because it would have been too hard for News Ltd to handle the extra work should those agents pass their rounds in.
So there you have it – distribution boys/girls – you have NOTHING TO SELL.
If, like me, you are elderly and have been doing it for 33 odd years I am sorry to tell you that you will have to go on the pension unless your business was so profitable that you have lots of superannuation or lots of elderly relatives who will leave you lots of money.
I (like Mark) am only telling the truth.
i am waiting to see what news does in qld as well, i am now the only newsagent in small country town (i purchased the opposition) if they want my customers, they will also have to do the delivery, so will be interesting to see how that one pans out. Cant see anyone delivering about 40 papers on a 40klm run each day for what news want to pay.
as far as not having a run to sell as part of my business, it never really was part of the business valuation as it adds very little to the bottom line anyway, and that is what business valuations are based on.
Rick, in SA 93% of our newsagents were distribution only so the impact here is huge. Only very few agents had retail/round apart from the country so the “migration” has impacted very severely on our industry here.
News has said the present distribution model is unsustainable. They are not making money from home deliveries.
The main reason is NOT the home delivery costs, but is in fact the cheap prices News give the home delivery customer. $3.95 per week for seven papers home delivered.
Jerry Harris at News needs to have a good look at the profitablity of continuing with the givaway prices for the subscriber and pay delivery agents a fair price for a fair service.
John
John it’s the News response to a challenged medium. I’d do the same if I were there. There is a disconnect between the needs of newsagents and the needs of publishers. I am not sure that those representing newsagents fully understand this.
If the smh sells for $1.70 m-f compared to the the telegrath at $1.00 it’s as clear as why news and newsagents are not making enough money. news is just stingy, I would be asking Stephen Kaye what is the plan if any he has about papers aswhat they have been doing has been pretty clueless.
John : The Newsagent is the one who makes money from home delivery. News Ltd have no interest financially in home delivery so there is no financial loss or profit to them.
News Ltd like other large business operators have to address their distribution process as a matter of course and if in the long term we as Newsagents benefit through better and more profitable distrubution models then its a win win.
Newsagents in the year 2012 by en large do not market the product well enough and are only too happy to accept the product on a sale and return basis without the outlay of marketing. That – in the year 2012 has to see attitude change from within. Home delivery can and is profitable if you do it right and you have quantity.
David It’s not that simple. HWT may not make any money, transactionally, from home delivery, but neither is the sale of newspapers their primary revenue stream.
Their game is the sale of advertising space. The value of the space depends on circulation. Home delivery is a key driver of circulation.
Ergo we back to the fact that they need home delivery to support their business model.
In regard to newsagencies being more proactive in marketing thier services. Agree completely.
There are groups of newsagents who want to work together and do this in a variety of effective and practical ways, yet their main obstacles are the obsfucation and obtuseness of HWT’s prevarications about the future of newspaper delivery.
The least they can do is articulate a direction that we can base our next business moves on. They don’t appear to have the capability or competence to make a decision. They are like rabbits in the headlights.
Too many big words for ‘lil ol’ me ricky.
VANA has produced a bulletin which mentions that the HWT intends to permit newsagent driven voluntary consolidation to occur within Victoria. VANA has a number of communication sessions occurring throughout June 2012. The way i read the bulletin is that the sessions are available to ALL newsagents. It would appear to me that this is probably the best possible outcome for Victorian newsagents. However i suspect the questions of size, location and number of distribution outlets probably still overlays the issue.
The “HWT permit” should rankle with any who think we live in a deregulated environment.