I heard Thursday from a regular here that they observed a Herald Sun branded vehicle delivering wrapped newspapers (throwing them) to every home in an outer suburban Melbourne suburban earlier this week. Our correspondent stopped and watched as every house in the street was delivered a newspaper.
Is anyone aware of a News campaign blanket delivering free newspapers like this?
Not such a bad idea , it could pick up new interest in papers .
I am aware that HWT occasionally will do this in a particular area. There is a letter advertising home delivery of newspapers.
Good idea to increase home delivery sales. I’d be happy if they did that in my area! Maybe they’d throw our Heralds etc and give us a day off.
I guess this shows that Nationwide isn’t planning on pulling the plug on newspapers any time soon.
Jenny, ceasing some (if not all) print editions must be part of a long term plan. It will happen when the numbers are right. One way to make the numbers right is to win people to the brand and migrate them to a digital platform. It’s a route others have taken with success.
There is no upside in home delivery unless you operate with serious (10K+) scale.
Mark, agree part of long term plan, but not short term. There is still a generation of paper readers that won’t be dropping off the perch in the next few years, and I don’t see the majority of those customers converting to digital.
Maybe we are in the minority, as not many others seems to be happy with home delivery, but you CAN make GOOD MONEY from home delivery (3K+) and that’s certainly an upside.
Jenny,
There may still be a reasonable number of readers, but that will not prevent many publications going to digital in a shorter time frame than many in the industry perceive.
Print publications require a very large critical mass to be viable. I believe there are publications in other countries that have gone online-only that had larger print circulation numbers than some of Australia’s existing publications.
As circulation declines, so does ad revenue and the ability to leverage economies of scale. This results in increased unit production costs and subsequent increases in cover prices. This in turn results in further decline in circulation … and the spiral continues. At some point the publishers won’t be achieving the ROI their shareholders demand and even if the circulation numbers still appear relatively large this will be the point at which publishers stop printing.
News Ltd gave free home deliveries in Adelaide last year to entice more subscriptions. They also gave 15 Advertisers a day for $1.00 a day, to 3 Cafes in our Shopping Centre as well as giving away pallet loads of free Advertisers ever saturday at AAMI Stadium across the road.
Needless to say we are NOT pleased with News Ltd at all!!
Unfortunately 26,000 subscribers at $2 a week aint going to substitute for 500,000 printed versions daily for the Herald Sun. Jarryd is exactly correct in his summation of the downward spiral of print news. The unfortunate add on is that aside from some very niche specific publications, the viability of the digital news version of the print news continues right on spiralling until the the publication itself goes right on out the back door.
In my opinion, the challenge is not so much for print media to remain as a commercial enterprise, it is for “written word” news to remain commercial. There is no doubt in my mind that on line news will slowly meander to be the domain of publicly funded news organisations, or be be financially subsidised by politically savvy philanthropists.
The issue here is that digital advertising revenue is not growing at the required pace to replace ad revenue from print. And there is still a question mark as to whether Digital ever can out perform Print in this regard. So in fact it’s not just a question of digital or print. The whole concept of news gathering and publishing is to be questioned. The writing is on the wall. Home delivery probably only has 10 years or so before it goes the way of bread. Get big or get out. If you get big then leverage your size and infrastructure to transfom your business into distributing things aother than newspapers.
Peter, some newsagent should be making commission on those cafe/stadium papers, if not you then the newsagent who distributes to that area.
Our newspaper sales are definitely on the decline, but only in our shop and all our sub agents, certainly not home delivery. Maybe News Ltd can still see a future in this and that’s why they do this free delivery. Why else are groups like Titan forming. Wouldn’t these newsagents be wasting time and money if circulation is declining that rapidly?
will news and Fairfax be viable in a digital only world if it comes to that? will they have the advertisers? will news media just be blogs and tweets?
There will certainly be blogs and tweets, but whether blogs and tweets will enhance an educated, resiliant, resourceful and working society, is yet to be determined.
As major distribution agent in regional vic, we actually perform these drops every now and then; to promote our home deliveries. A good newsagent/distribution agent should work on building a relationship with the publishers to work together to promote papers. We recently threw papers to 500 homes each day for two weeks with the help of a good relationship with publishers. Its a catch 22 situation though, with over 100 subagents, we could lose retail sales, but gain home deliveries. Point is, nothing wrong with boosting home delivery numbers, its just another option for our customers to choose from.
In the same street this arvo, wrapped papers in most front yards, I didn’t see the van today though.
It’s an odd one Lance. I don’t see giving away newspapers as a great way to grow sales.
Publishers should work more closely with retailers – that’s where they can achieve growth.
Could it just be to build circulation figures ?
Surely they could do that a lot easier than actually delivering newspapers.