Print Circulation Is Down At All But One UK Regional Newspaper And More Than 50% of Free Newspapers Suffered, Too -- Could That Be Why Publishers Are Talking Up Multi-Platform Readership

Every AM, PM and Sunday regional was down with the exception of the Irish News in Belfast that increased circulation 1.6%. Most weeklies also suffered declines. But the spinmasters would have you believe that everything is really great in regional land, as long as you count total readership of the print/multimedia platform rather than just print circulation.

A survey published by the British Market Research Bureau, for instance, says that in actual fact the regional newspapers added 400,000 new readers this year as long as you combine print and Internet readership.

For instance, The Herald (Glasgow), Scotland’s best selling broadsheet, saw its print readership drop from 71,000 to 68,500 according to the August 31 six-monthly ABCs – it had been more than 95,000 just four years ago -- but the newspaper claims a readership of some 300,000 when the Internet site is taken into account, according to the recent National Readership Survey.

ftm background

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Can A Metropolitan PM Stem Circulation Losses And Grow The Business Using What It Admits Is A “Radical” Solution By Giving Itself Away Downtown But Continuing To Be A Paid-For Elsewhere?
The UKs Manchester Evening News has tried just about everything to stop the rot – widening its distribution area but that increased the cost per copy, starting a successful Lite edition but still the classifieds flowed to the Internet, reorganizing editorial to cut some 20% of its editorial staff to reduce costs, but it wasn’t enough. So now it is pushing the envelope where none other has dared to tread – it is giving away downtown what it sells elsewhere.

“What We Have Here Is A Failure to Communicate” -- No, Not Cool Hand Luke But The Daily Mail to Gannett And Others As The Northcliffe Regional Newspaper Group Is Taken Off the Table.
When the Daily Mail and Trust Group (DMGT) put the Northcliffe regional newspapers up for sale last November they let it be known they were looking for numbers in the £1.5 billion range -- about 11 times the group’s annual cash flow and reflecting a prosperous well-run entity. What it got was numbers in the £1.2 – £1.3 billion range -- not quite fire sale figures but certainly taking into account the current soft UK regional newspaper advertising picture. Result: DMGT says it is keeping the newspapers after all.

How Many Times Have You Been Asked: “How Come The Media Reports Only the Bad News”? There’s A Line of Thinking That Warns The More Local The Media The More Positive Its News Should Be
British Society of Editors at their annual conference this week heard a “futurologist” advise them that the more local a newspaper positions itself then the more that newspaper should report the community’s positive news, and it should steer away from sensational crime reporting.

It’s Local News That Sells the Best -- Something That Local And Regional Newspapers Must Rigorously Apply to Survive
Regular readers of ftm’s newspaper stories know how we have preached that newspapers need to concentrate on local coverage for both their print and web sites – it’s something that national newspapers and global web sites really can’t compete against -- so its with some “We told you so” glee that we note that in the US and the UK that message is being enforced.

The methodology for Internet readership counting, and even whether those numbers should be used, are still being debated, but one thing is for sure – print readership is way down and even if readership is up courtesy of the Internet the financial drain on print is far more than the revenues coming in from the Internet.

The UK regional press have been used to very high margins – some more than 30% -- which is why, for instance, Gannett invested in the UK a few years back and via its Newsquest chain it is the second largest regional newspaper owner in the UK.

But if you read Gannett’s recent quarterly statements you’ll find buried a line or two on Newsquest basically saying its having a hard time in a soft advertising market, and that their profits are not adding to the Gannett bottom line as they had once forecast.

UK regional newspaper management has really been quite vicious in trying to stop the rot. They have closed printing plants, they have fired editorial and other staff, they have reduced the number of editions printed, they have switched from PM to AM, they have focused more and more on local news, and they have increased their digital spending, but at the end of the day the August ABCs show that print circulation fell everywhere.

ftm in the past has concentrated on the changes made to increase circulation implemented by two major UK regionals – the Birmingham Mail, owned by Trinity Mirror, and the Manchester Evening News, owned by Guardian Newspapers, and it’s time to take a look at whether what they have done has worked. Each took a different approach to try and get readership up, but the results thus far are not encouraging.

Circulation drops of 10% in 2004 and 2005 for the Birmingham Evening Mail saw the numbers dive below 100,000. The paper’s answer -- a £1 million relaunch concentrating very much on local news. To convince its readership this was really a different animal it went back to the name it gave up in 1967, The Birmingham Mail.

Local news that only used to appear on the inside pages became prominent on the front page. Local offices that had been shut for budget reasons were reopened. Because Birmingham, being the UK’s second largest city, has an extremely diverse population, it increased editions and editorial was focused based on geographically where that particular edition of the paper would circulate. Each edition has a minimum of five local stories.

Trinity Mirror boasted in its news release at the relaunch 11 months ago, “The new ultra local editions are all based on geography to serve widely differing communities across greater Birmingham and the city itself. This follows extensive research among existing and potential readers, who strongly backed a community reporting approach.”

And the result? Yet another example of market research saying one thing and reality saying something else. The rate of decrease actually increased with circulation down 17.5% year-on-year to 75,787. Editor Steve Dyson told the Guardian, “As we expected, these latest ABC figures reflect a continued downward trend. However, while the January-June 2006 figure shows a sharp year-on-year fall, going forward the trend is expected to improve with the rate of decline slowing during the second half of the year.”

That quote is kind of scary. He admits the rot is not over. His target for the rest of the year is to try and stem the rate of decline, not actually increase circulation. Those dreams of pushing circulation back into six figures are surely gone forever.

Trinity Mirror is said to be placing valuations on all its properties in a review to be concluded by the end of the year. Many pundits have suggested that Trinity Mirror should sell its national newspapers (Daily Mirror, People, Sunday Mirror) and concentrate on the regionals, but as Birmingham shows, its regionals are not exactly having a great time, either.

The Manchester Evening News embarked on an absolutely unique marketing plan in May – it decided to give away 50,000 copies of the newspaper downtown (city center) where surprisingly it had few sales anyway, but still sell the newspaper in the suburbs, where most of its sales came from, but increasing its price, too. And how has all of that worked out?

Giving the paper away downtown turned out to be very successful, in fact the run was increased to 60,000 and they are getting into the hands of the young demographics for whom advertisers yearn. But out in the suburbs it is another story. The price increases turned off a lot of paid readership and it’s not yet fully understood whether the downtown giveaway has had an effect, too. (Did those people downtown who didn’t buy there before, buy instead in the suburbs, and now they get it for free downtown they don’t need to buy it in the suburbs?)

End results? Paid circulation down to 114,676, a drop of 16.5%. Management is targeting total circulation to reach 200,000 in 2007 and that surely means more free copies while sales continue declining. Their spin is that 200,000 is a great number and it doesn’t matter what the percentage is between free/paid.

And with today marking the real start of the London free PM newspaper war between News International’s thelondonpaper and Associated Newspapers’ London Lite it’s worth a brief look at how regional free newspapers have done in the past year. And the answer is, not that well.

Roy Greenslade, the Guardian’s media expert, wrote on his blog site, “The story of the regional frees is about as depressing as the story of the paid-fors. Of the 578 free titles where year-on-year comparisons are possible, 398 of them distributed fewer copies in the first six months of 2006 than in the same period last year. Only 180 reported growth and I have to say, in total copies, it was minimal.”

While the Internet no doubt has shifted some readership from print to regional there is a much bigger problem than that out there – that management has not only cut the fat but has really cut deep into the editorial bone. No week goes by that there aren’t announcements of editorial redundancies, getting rid of senior editors by having those who remain responsible for more than one title so they have less time to focus on one, and the like.

And as everyone knows one reason the regionals have always had such high margins is because they pay so low. None of that encourages talent to stay or new talent to come.

All of that adds up to a valuable lesson that is out there for everyone to learn.