London Gets a New Free Financial Daily That Distributes At the End of the Commute While In Geneva, Where There Is No Free Daily, The Tribune de Genève Tries to Persuade Readers It Is Not a Freebie

And with a 50-strong editorial team headed by a former Fleet Street business editor and two former Metro executives behind the launch, City AM is not something the FT can shrug off lightly. But it thinks the new tabloid will find a completely different audience to those who read the FT.

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The news that the once mighty Blick has been dethroned by a free tabloid as newspaper circulation leader in Switzerland is sure to have ramifications far outside Swiss borders. If ever there was a case of "If it can happen there, it can happen here" then this has to be it.

Because City AM is a tabloid, and follows many tabloid rules including not making the stories too long and detailed, it may not appeal to the boardroom and executive officers, but rather to workers in the back offices. And since probably not too many boardroom or top executives commute via the Underground (metro) their chances of getting their hands on the newspaper might actually be light.

Indeed one of the problems the new tabloid had to overcome was how to get its newspaper into the hands of those who would have interest. Obviously handing it out like the Metro all over town would just result in massive wastage as not many commuters really care that much about such financial stories. But those coming out of the Underground (metro) stations in London’s two main financial centers would most likely be the right demographics for a business tabloid.

But that meant distribution AFTER the commute, bringing up the all-important question of whether there is enough time to look at the newspaper between the time one gets off public transport, buys their initial Starbucks coffee, and settles down to their office work. Perhaps it might have a long shelf life – possibly a lunchtime read.

Whatever, the initial response seems to be positive. Before it launched, the paper was having trouble attracting advertisers, and at the end of the day whether that changes will ultimately decide the newspaper’s future.

City AM started up with an initial £10 million investment. It is 24-pages dedicated to “the world of business – and the players behind it;” including some seven pages of news, plus TV listings, sports and columns written by well known experts in their fields.

And showing it is not a lightweight, it has led on such stories as Liberty Media’s John Malone considering a £1 billion bid for the Flextech TV business and the German EON utility company looking at bidding for Scottish Power – not exactly the gossip of most interest to the vast majority of commuters, but they would be interesting to those working in the financial community.

The FT already has its own free sheet, FT PM, an A4 size pink sheet that gives an update to the day’s financial news and acts as a promo for the next day’s newspaper. It began distributing it in London financial institutions several months ago and just recently expanded distribution in six further UK cities to similar institutions.

It is also counting on the fact it is considered a premium product with premium content (and premium price) and that its readers are not about to defect for a free tabloid. And indeed that may well be what happens – “Upstairs” will continue reading the FT, and “Downstairs” now have their own business daily.

Free newspapers are globally a major cause for circulation drops at paid newspapers, but in Geneva, Switzerland, the problem is a bit different.

There is no free daily newspaper in Geneva so it appears some of the public are helping themselves to the tabloid Tribune de Genève that they should be paying for from its 682 news boxes spread across the city.

The French-language newspaper is trying to counter the pilferage by running half-page display house ads that cry out, “This is not a free newspaper!” and a week ago it extended that message to its entire front page.

The thefts may be because newspapers do not come cheaply in Geneva, or perhaps the idea of free newspapers has caught on in a town where there is not a free daily newspaper. The six-day a week Tribune, with an average 40 pages an edition, costs on average close to $2 daily at the kiosk or news box (more on Saturday when it has a TV magazine), although heavily promoted annual subscriptions can cut the price in half.

The Swiss are used to the “honor” system for making payments. For instance, in Geneva, one buys bus tickets at a bus stop machine and there are infrequent inspections. Thus adopting many years ago newspaper boxes that have no locks, that allows one to lift out a newspaper without actually putting money in the coin box, was just a way of life, and for the longest time the average annual loss was around 2%.

Times have unfortunately changed. The newspaper says that today about half of its box newspapers are regularly stolen and sometimes that goes up to around 70%.

After a similar campaign last year the losses dropped to 20% but it is now worse than ever. The obvious solution is to replace the news boxes with those that require payment before unlocking the cover, but with 682 such boxes on the streets that is a large investment.

So, now it doesn’t even take a free newspaper in town to cause circulation problems. Free and newspapers are two words increasingly being used together, and if a free newspaper isn’t available, well, then it seems some of the public have decided what to do about that!