Fairfax yesterday announced to South Australian newsagents that shortly the company will cease distributing The Age on the day of publication. Instead, South Australia will receive The Age the day after publication. Here is the Fairfax announcement:
This decision is not a shock. It is also not the first time an Australian publisher has done this.
More changes will come following the Nine takeover of Fairfax and more changes will come after those changes.
Print media continues to confront significant disruption – advertising continues to fall and print circulation continues to fall.
We need to run our businesses attracting shoppers who are not newspaper shoppers.
Mark F
“We need to run our businesses attracting shoppers who are not newspaper shoppers.”
It seems to be becoming more obvious doesn’t it.
I’m not in this industry directly, but I see you must all start/continue thinking differently to the last 10yrs.
So, no Age on Sunday which arrives Monday. And Fridays edition arrives Saturday along with Saturday edition. Work that out.
The Adelaide Advertiser hasn’t been sent to NSW for a long time.
We had a customer that was getting Bris Courier Mail, Age, and Adelaide Advertiser 7 days per week (and all 1 day delayed), and was happy to pay the freight charges, and it they were a business tool for him. All of the sudden we were unable to source the Advertiser.
He did at one point also drop all deliveries to try the online thing on his tablet or pc…..This just didn’t work for him either. He couldn’t highlight or circle articles for later review.
So to this day he still gets the Age and the BCM.
They are an exclusive putaway service for him, but where we put them they are visible from the counter.
Because of this, a couple of other customers have seen that we can get them, so they are getting weekend editions as well.
Great 1st week :
Monday arrived Monday lunch
Tuesday arrived Tuesday lunch
Wednesday & Thursday arrived together Thursday
No Friday as we cancelled , due Saturday
Saturday arrived 1pm
Sunday …still waiting 4pm
Joke !!
Way to kill interest in their product. Fairfax people must know where this ends.
The issue is; it’s a Melbourne paper not a South Australian or national paper. For a time it filled a niche gap in the market from a content/reader profile point of view. Logistically it certainly can’t ever have been profitable. With the change in owner philosophy its days are numbered. A stop in Adelaide sales won’t affect advertising revenue very much. Its Adelaide demise will hardly be a harbinger for the death of newspapers. It’s not relevant to the industry as a whole.
Kevin I think the issue is that it was available same day for many years. To cut that off without proper explanation is a poor move by Fairfax. I get why they did it and why they will do what they will do in the coming months and year. However, they need to explain these moves to their readers, to bring them on the journey with them.
Kevin,
Thankfully your blinkered viewpoint is not shared by most and not by Fairfax. Their changes in SA were designed to somehow continue distribution and minimise the cost of doing so. They know the value of customers willing to pay $6.60 for the Saturday Age. Retreating from a Capital city cannot be their goal, admitting such would be a nail in the advertising revenues of the Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra titles. The futures of which remain inextricably entwined.
The challenge for Fairfax (GG, GNS, Newscorp etc etc) is to transform from their current businesses models to a new world. They are not ready for a big bang, they need to transform and take their customers with them.
The issue here is that inept management are in danger of achieving what they seek to avoid.
You might believe the Age is safe in its heartland and does not need SA (or Bordertown or Mildura). My belief is you are very mistaken. A collapse in the business systems that serve the industry in nobody’s interest and if inept management bring it about, we should all be aware that no newsagency, no matter how profitable currently, will be immune without these key systems.