The Australian and Mumbrella are reporting the end of newsagent led News Corp and Nine newspaper product home delivery by newsagents in Sydney.
Australia’s two biggest newspaper publishers, Nine and News Corp, will cease newsagent-led home delivery for their print titles in the Sydney metro area. This excludes CBD delivery.
According to a Nine spokesperson, the move is necessary to ensure the model is sustainable.
The move means newspapers will still be delivered to subscribers’ homes, however the service will not be provided by local newsagents. Instead, News Corp will appoint a single distributor for its deliveries as of early 2020, while Nine will use two.
Nine announced its plans to change the distribution for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review in a letter to newsagents last week, while News Corp announced its plans in June. News Corp is the publisher for The Australian and The Daily Telegraph in New South Wales.
Some online have read this as the end of print delivery altogether. It is not.
It is almost seven years to the day since the News Corp T2020 project was announced to newsagents. The decision by News and Nine to have newspaper home deliveries managed by a distributor is the next step in the roll out of the remnants of that project.
On one hand, this move is another attack by these big businesses on the businesses of small business newsagents, businesses that have faithfully and cost effectively served the publishers for decades. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for newsagents to be done with newspaper home delivery and thereby rid their businesses of a service for which they received a fraction of minimum wage to fulfil.
To those outside the channel, yes, this has been seven years in the making. The main impact will be from ignorant accountants and bank managers who think its will negatively harm the value of businesses. For the most part it will not.
The publishers are doing this because they think it will save them money and / or help them maintain newspaper home delivery for a while yet. I don’t see that happening. There are too many days of the week when delivering newspapers to homes are loss-making. Business managers with an eye to profitability will prevail and at some point, home delivery seven days a week will cease. That will be a sad day.
Mark ned = end ?
Fixed. Thanks Peter.