Check out the Twitter conversation between Rupert Murdoch and others today including a comment about News changes to newspaper delivery.
Rupert Murdoch appears to agree that delivering The Australian on the front garden is not acceptable and that changing this is in their plans.
I am not aware of anything in T2020 which addresses exactly where the newspaper is delivered.
I wish Rupert Murdoch had embraced the opportunity to support newsagents and show that words from News Limited about partnership with newsagents are more than just words.
Your words are very diplomatic.
News Ltd & Rupert Murdoch abuse Newsagents.
I think ol rupert needs to get off his a@& and go on a delivery run at 3 am and see how far he can throw the paper . So he says this has to change but yet this is not part of the t2020 agreement so that must mean we might be in for more changes , they really have no idea do they …..
Lets make sure that the magazine department is handled as well as we can as at present the magazine suppliers and publishers are trying to work with us and we must respect that.
As for the newspapers, as a subagent they do little for me and have no where near the importance to me that magazines do. We will use them as a customer as long as they have some degree of efficiency for us but clearly for me anyway their time is limited. While Rupert Murdochs treatment of newsagents is disappointing, it makes the future place of papers clear to me and that is far behind magazines.
Apologies to delivering newsagents who will have a different perspective on papers. My point of view is as stated from that of a sub agent for papers.
Well put Mark.
Cents a day is definitely a bargain to have an Australian thrown in the garden; cents only enough to cover rolling the Australian, other expenses (car, petrol, driver’s wages and associated costs) are contributed by the delivery newsagent.
Before you sign up to t2030 think about what he just said on twitter ,you might find yourself hand delivering 10000 papers to the breakfast table .
Cents a day is most definately a bargain. I can order a takeaway lunch from the pub across the road and be charged $9 for delivery.
There’s no doubt some deliverers do a better, more professional job than others, just the same as some businesses are better run than others.
However, with plenty of years experience across 4 different newsagencies in early mornings, I can say that 90% of the “he throws the ‘paper in my garden” complaints come from people with cars on the driveway, cars parked out front making access near impossible, overgrown gardens, bins left outside, etc, etc.
Most of the customers appreciate the efforts that delivery staff make. Some will never be satisfied.
What I can also say without doubt is that some agents have created massive rods for their own backs by acceding to outrageous customer requests.
I also see the models for T2020 making individualised, “3rd pot plant on the left of the balcony” absolutely a thing of the past.
With delivery staff required to complete bigger runs at squeezed cost bases, the delivery model will become a uniform, easiest place of secure delivery in the most time effective manner possible.
In other words, forget the doorstep deliveries of the past. Subagents will need to make some adjustments as well. No more entering shops, disarming/re-arming alarms etc.
Murdoch has no grip on what happens at delivery level. The way his titles are delivered proves that. The Herald Sun in particular has had 15 years worth of changing markets and Internet pervasion to have gradually changed their business model, but instead did absolutely nothing, including being 10 years behind on gradual cover price increases. The fact the ‘papers are still being hand loaded and unloaded on/off trucks just goes to show how out of touch and still buried in the 1960’s that News Corp is.
The only hope any of the newspapers have for survival now rests firmly on the connection between the “resellers” and the consumer. Giving them away at McDonald’s is not creating new readers, nor will it be satisfying Advertisers who need more bang for their buck.
What Rupert is referring to is the total concept of home delivery – it’s not a comment on how well we newsagents execute. He is obviously insinuating that there is a better way to deliver news than via hard copy dead trees (his terminology in another tweet).
By the way has anyone heard how the grand experiment for T2020 is going in Queensland. Rumour has it that it’s a complete flop. Now I wonder who will get the blame for that .
No dave I don’t think that’s what he was saying.
Dave that is why i called it T2030 because by 2030 they might have it worked out .I see it as something that is going to be dragged out for years to come ..
I dont agree with Dave I dont think he is talking I am more thinking Flat Wrap ect
But I would love so feeback on how the t2020 rollout is going in QLD
I think we’re two months away from meaningful feedback on T2020.
what about some non meaningfull first impressions from QLD T2020
Well done Mark, single best use of Twitter Ive seen. Delivering the message straight to the top, and got a response. Like you, I thought his reponse related to improving the viability of delivering papers, not the demise of the paper on the lawn channel. The complaint, in my view, was a throw away line , the likes of which we hear 100 times a day.
In regard to some of the above queries regarding QLD T2020 I’m one of the T2020 affected newsagents and I’m bloody happy it’s come along !
It’s prompted me to stop procrastinating and dump my run early (the contract fulfillment amount offered was a joke !).
I’m quite excited about having the extra time to put more effort into other parts of my businesses and making more money. I’ve started explaining whats happening to my delivery customers and I’ve been pleasently surprised by the number of customers who now will or already have dropped the delivery run to pick up in the morning in store. Quite a few others have also stated that they will now swap to digital only. Personally I think it will be interesting to see if the predicted numbers for delivery that are being tendered for at the moment end up becoming a reality or end up being much lower.
I think T2020 had to happen and I do think it’s a good thing in regard to how it’s motivated me to make choices I probably should have 12 months ago. From QNP point of view it’s also something that I think they had to do for simple business profitablity reasons.
It will almost certainly kill off some newsagents who relied on their runs for a large portion of their profitablity or are not diversified. While that is a very sad prospect I do think it will only strengthen the economic position those of us who remain.
thanks paul
Great Post Paul. It is great to hear feedback from an actual agent who can give a true perspective.
You have mentioned “the contract fulfillment amount offered was a joke.” Could you expand on this comment, as those of us south of the border are not amiliar with this term. I was under the impression an agent would tender a price, not be told this is what you get.
Back to the original topic of the article, I have found over the years that purchasers of the Australian are the Rudest consumers. Always push in, whinge if sell out, pay late when get it home delivered, and as seen above whinge if it lands in the garden.
We are not in a capital city so we stopped carrying The Australian 18months ago. We used to sell approx 40/week. But the whingers that go with it are just not worth it.
And the quality of journalism is poor too.
Kyle, the “contract Fulfillment Payment” was a payment that QNP will pay to agents if they maintain their runs and co operate with all requirements from QNP up until the initially advised handover time which was 7th April. That has now of course blown out by another 6 weeks at least at this stage.
I’m not sure what others were offered but I was offered $4K. Not even close to worth the hassle.
The tendering for the next stage didn’t interest me at all as I can see alot of pitfalls involved. I’m not a logistics specialist, which is what I believe you would need to be to be really succesful with managing the larger areas. I’m personally also very dubious as to whether the delivery numbers will stay within the specified range for QNP not to renegotiate the contract at some point within the 5 year term. While I think there are definately people out there who can make it work, some will go into it and not take into account all of the variables which is a very dangerous thing indeed.
Thank you Paul
Could almost predict that figures will fall as much as 20% in home delivery, but if they buy them in a retail store than it wont drop in retail, it may actually rise, so contracts may not change just the mix of HD and Retail.
My only concern with tendering is also the circulation drop. If you factor these things in and have all leases and most costs covered in the first 3 years you should be fine.
I have been involved with the next round of disscussions with NL this week their main point is really being pushed towards sustainability for deliveries and i dont believe it is in their (or our) interests to have large distributors handing back areas…
All i can say is that i agree with Paul, it has made me make some decisions and work hard at those things that i have been putting off in retail, work hard and get your retail shop going well and it wont matter whats happens with distribution.
For the guys and girls in the other states who think it is hard to be kept in the dark…it is better than being the lab rat under the spot light…. hopefully the issues will be sorted by the time you come to do this.
It seems payments have been worked out on papers delivered because all areas are being paid different amounts.
We are not in Queensland but like Paul we are terminating home delivery, looking forward to stop paying expenses in dollars and getting cents in return. Unlike with Paul, however, there have been no offer of “contract fulfillment amount”, but threat of liability for “damages we suffer including any additional costs which we incur in arranging for alternative distribution services to fulfil the functions which you are no longer providing.”
Thankyou again for Paul your email, and Michael yours aswell.
Ebo, who has threatened you for liability of damages? How can they possibly do such a thing?
fulfillment amount is only offered to those who fulfil the contract to 7th April in the current areas under review, if you hand back sooner you get nothing,
This seems to be a goodwill gesture by NL as there is nothing in our existing contracts to say NL should pay us anything.
The idea to take out of this is to start to focus on retail and become a specialist retailer and if distribution happens to go your way then cool but there us no harm in becoming better at retail.
Just another note
The shops that may also have to worry about these changes are some gift store or ink retailers, what is going to happen when a couple of thousand newsagents focus on being better retailers and not be distracted with home delivery and newspapers, we are also going to change the face of retail for other small businesses out there.
Next stop taking on some BIG retailers
Just a thought?
Michael have you or any other newsagents actually put in a tender yet, and if so who is advising you on the process. What is involved in the second round of discussions? we are a fair way south and have a great distribution business that we don’t want to see f up so any info would be greatly appreciated. thanks
Tender has just opened, website access yesterday,so none have been entered yet i would have thought unless they are super organised and know what NL is thinking.
If you have time before the rollout and think you might be interested in tendering than i imagine you might be starting to look at different aspects of your business and see if they will still fit in the bigger picture, eg, shed or distrubution warehouse for example, maybe start to talk to lenders or spend some time reasearching leases for vehicles and or upgraded machiney, try to learn as much as you can about HR, WHOS etc, remember that you will be specialist in logistics not a newsagent so employee awards may change, laws maybe different.
Do as much work as you can, have an idea of how you want run it, maybe join others agents etc, the more you do now the easier it may be when it happens to you,
we have not had the luxury of advanced notice, as some agents in other states will get but i hope to help NL get this right here so you dont have the same problems all over again. This is not perfect but to take on such a big fundmental change is never going to be easy.
Sorry if it is not very specific but in all areas and agents it will be different, i would just advise to start looking at your business and how you see it will run in the future.
Thank you Michael
Excellent comments from Michael and Paul.
I have learnt more from comments in this blog than I have from publishers or ANF / NANA on this subject.
Interested about the comments from Ebo, and how common these sorts of threats are?
There are also newsagents who have successfully consolidated runs in recent years to 10,000 and more in daily deliveries. They have navigated the operational challenges of consolidating home delivery runs and sub agent runs.
I mention this to note that there are good operators who can share their operational experiences.
We are one of those newsagencies who have taken on runs thru newsagencies relinguishing theirs, (3 over two neighboring towns) and we did this to make our business more profitable. We did as Michael said, leased a large shed, bought more vehicles etc then turned 4 daily runs into 3. We now supply papers to 4 retail only newsagencies plus our own, as well as all the subs that came with their territories.
The worst part was manually updating the computer with the new customer details and setting up new runs, but I believe there is software available now to do this, and hiring more drivers. My husband had to learn all these new runs so it was a pretty tiring time for him, and an extremely stressful time for our family and our shop staff.
A few years on and we have a fantastic business, and because we have great delivery staff we don’t have any more headaches than when we only had the one run. Our retail newsagents don’t have many supply issues, and our new customers no longer worry that the papers are being delivered by a newsagents from a different town.
And no we did not lose many home deliveries to shop sales.
Our only worry in all this is the number 10,000 – today we delivered and supplied approx 4200 papers -less than half than that being talked about – and without going 90k south or 40k north to the next group of country towns there is only small growth that we can take on.
We are interested in any feed back from regional QLD as to delivery numbers that are currently being discussed.
jenny, there is no automated way for adding new customers to a run, certainly not one that delivers the most efficient run. You can import them in seconds but its important to take time to lay the run out for efficient delivery based on driver feedback.
Mark, sorry I meant now you can bring customers over, we couldn’t even do that. I know any new run has to be set up from scratch, especially from an exercise book!
But tell me if both newsagents use Tower Systems why can’t you write a program to take a copy of a run from one newsagent and load it on to another newsagents computer? It’s still the same run, just a different operator.
Jenny, it exists but it’s not a program newsagents can run. We do it from the office (and have done for years) as there are checks and balances – for example, someone may have multiple Courier mail titles in their system for some odd reason.
This has been a very useful blog post. It’s really good to see constructive dialogue around T2020. Should Lupi Rupi read this post he should realize that there are many Aussie newsagents who simply want a more realistic system to deal with. T2020 will be a good thing for those that want to make it work. The cynics who still resist it probably need a good reality check more than anything.
KMc
I am a cynic, its not about resisting from my point of view, it is what happens next – for example we may only have subscription Newspapers sooner than later and then magazines.
What are Newsagents going to sell then?
Derek, resisting will not alter what suppliers will do. We are better off focusing on the future we can create for ourselves.
Our suppliers owe us nothing.
Youre right, I am not resisting though, I am very distrusting and I guess resentful on the way as a customer I have been treated by both in various aspects of circulation & distribution of both Newspaper publishers.
Yes, I understand. I look at anything like this and wonder where I will get the best return for my focus. Hence me selling my run in 2006.
Derek, I do believe that you’re partly right in distrusting the reasoning behind the T2020. Lets face it, it has nothing to do with making newsagents more profitable or better equipped for the future in a primary sense. If that occurs as a secondary or tertiary result then all is good but the primary reason this is all being done is so that the publishers can look after themselves.
Having said that it’s not a bad thing if it shakes up the newsagency industry a bit. That NL has been able to do this without so much as a sniffle shows how weak the various representative organisations are and the newsagency industry as a whole. If we want to have a real say in our futures this needs to change !
If it also makes people question why their businesses are anchored around print media, both newspapers and magazines, in 2012 thats a good thing too.
Jenny, as an aside and from what I’ve read and been told so far the T2020 model as it applies to SE Qld won’t be applicable for rural areas due to the distances and numbers involved. Whether that means there will be no variation on T2020 for rural areas is anyones guess.
rural runs will be a thing of the past, i klnow of a couple that news ltd have let the agent hand back with no attempt to continue a home delivery run. Its an economic reality, it costs too much to deliver a paper in most small rural towns, its a question of who bears the coct for it to comtinue, the newsagents are starting to say no, news ltd wont picj up the tab, so its a question of how much is a customer prpeared to pay.
Fairfax is moving in this direction based on their announcement earlier this year on the viability of even delivering newspapers for retail sale.
Rick the best solution is user pays. I cannot understand how we allow a system where a producer controls the setting of delivery fees, regardless of the costs to the delivery service providor. If you charge a realistic delivery fee the customers will still pay because they know full well what it costs to come into to town to pick a paper up. They’l whinge but they’ll still pay.
Just had an interesting chat with a customer enquiring about home delivery in our area, he currently lives in London and his paper is delivered to his door, not rolled or flat wrapped, just placed under the portico.
Asked him not to repeat that to anyone around here!
Depending upon where he is in London though Jenny there are a far greater density of newsagency types to customers. Its closer to what we see in the capital citys with an agency on every block/second block and where wrapping is unfeasible or simply not required. Certainly parts of the UK are delivered like we do.
If you look at the website of the delivery companies in London they are offering “through the letterbox” delivery. Both this and the “under the Portico” version equate to a walker hand delivering the paper, rather than throwing it from a car. The customers are also paying a lot more for the delivery service (it equates to about the same cost as the newspaper itself)
I guessed they would be delivered by hand, another customer told me where he is from in England they are delivered on push bike and found it odd that we use cars.
On the subject of what they pay for delivery most people in our area would pay a lot more – they’re amazed when you tell them what the delivery fees are. I think our publishers are way out of touch with the increase in the costs involved in deliveries over the years.
Jenny
The publishers know what the costs are, but chooses to do little about it.
i set my own fees, and this is how it should be, if the publishers don’t like it they can have their runs back.
Jenny @post 32
What a great success story. Good job!
I love stories on this blog-site that separate the wheat from the chaff.
I can say, with some creditability, that I know what you and your husband went through with the new runs, new staff etc having amalgamated 3 rounds into one myself.
In relation to your concerns about the 10,000 papers round that is a feature of T2020, I believe there is no reason for you to be worried at all. I say this after having listened to one of the News Ltd staff, who is on secondment to the NL Team involved with South Side Brisbane. What that person and others from NL have essentially told me is that (especially in rural areas) the 10,000 will not work in some areas due to the distances and numbers involved. – Paul@post41 says as much.
When you think about it, NL is hardly likely to put at risk the very good delivery service of 4200 papers per day by asking you to travel another 180 k’s round trip if it’s not viable for you to do that, nor viable for them to pay the costs involved.
Whilst it is vital to wait for NL to conduct the review process part of the South Side Brisbane launch so NL can make informed decisions on how the Metro set-ups will work in a more precise sense, there is no doubt rural areas will have different T2020 features and different solutions. One size will definitely not fit all. Maybe it will be a case of if it’s working ok in a particular rural area, then leave it alone, because to change it might open up a can of worms for NL.
To my mind, T2020 is all about sustainability for the next 5 years (at the very least) of distribution of print newspapers. Making it viable for both Publishers and Distribution Newsagents. I think even the most ill-advised Newsagent would now know that many have been relinquishing their rounds (because they are not viable) forcing NL into the Distibution Model re-think.
Certainly some Financiers are pricking their ears up at the knowledge of 5 year contracts. I think for those that look at a glass and see it as half full and are prepared to put in the hard yards, T2020 might be a good thing.
Jenny@post48.
In our communal depot we have an Englishman who has worked in a UK Newsagency and he told me the school kids are used for HD and whilst they always started at 7am, by law the start was 8am. Of course the 8am start was never adhered to because the kids would never get to school on time and would never earn any money! 🙂 So the cost structures and delivery mechanisms are vastly different.
Dennis
Dennis you’re right about being able to do this. There are many newsagents now managing the delivery of more than 10,000 papers a day.
I think you’re also right in your assessment of what is at the core of T2020.
Dennis, thank you for that info. I totally agree with you on ‘if it’s working ok in a particular area then leave it alone’. If it’s working better than ok then they should be smart enough to use it as a model for other rural areas.