It’s Clear In the US, Germany, and Belgium That Publishers Wanting to Attract Mostly Young Readers Must Make Their Paper Free; Experiments Show New Tabloids Asking Low Kiosk Payment Don’t Work

Obviously the Tribune did its math and saw it could make more from the increased advertising than it was making from its 25-cent cover price.

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The Times Raises Its Newsstand Price 5p, Ending The 12-Year UK Quality Newspaper Price War; But In Eastern Europe Newspaper Wars By Free and Paid Tabloids Are In Full Swing
It was September, 1993. Circulation of the Times broadsheet was continuing its spiral downwards with no end in sight, so owner Rupert Murdoch resorted to that old standby in times of circulation crisis – he cut the newsstand price by 30%. That single move is credited today, 12-years later, with causing such a financial bloodbath for all of the UK national quality broadsheets that they have yet to recover fully. And it also literally changed the face of most British quality national newspapers.

New York Times Tries Something New: If the Young Won’t Read Its Newspaper, Then Buy Into the One They Do
The old adage goes, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” and that is exactly what the New York Times Company has done in Boston in a novel experiment to see if it cannot yet still hook the youth market.

The Young Choose the Internet for Information, Television for Entertainment and Newspapers For …Well, Actually They Don’t Choose Newspapers Hardly At All
The latest US market data makes for very sorry newspaper reading and helps explain why circulation numbers continue their downward spiral. Some 82% of young adults aged 18-24 choose the Internet or television as their primary information and entertainment provider.

How to Maintain Readership Loyalty
Many European newspapers continue to suffer circulation declines but there is one solid way of not only stopping the trend but reversing it, too.

With Tabloids More and More Popular in Europe, News Agencies Need to Re-Examine Their News Production
The Times has followed the Independent in the UK and gone tabloid. In Sweden, many broadsheets have either already moved to tabloid or have announced they will switch.

In Germany where there have been several experiments at producing tabloids aimed at the young commuter, but carrying a nominal charge of 50-centimes or less, the journalistic results have been quite compelling, but the circulation numbers have failed to inspire, meaning advertising failed to produce forecast revenues in spite of joint deals with the mother papers.

Actually, it’s very difficult to tell how financially well or badly those low charge tabloids are doing because most don’t publish their circulations except in combination with their mother paper. Axel Springer, for instance, produces the tabloid Welt Kompact but refuses to publish its circulation, rather combining it with its premier Die Welt newspaper.

The popular feeling is that by refusing to provide Welt Kompact’s own numbers that Springer has something to hide, such as it only circulates some 20,000 – 30,000 copies a day whereas free newspapers would expect to distribute in the six figures. Even so, Welt Kompact has steadily been growing the number of cities in which it circulates.

Other low charge newspapers are said to have poor circulation. News in Frankfurt, for instance, is thought sell no more than 20,000 copies daily, and the same sort of numbers are thought to be true for 20 cents.

The strategy for the new cheap tabloids was never clearly explained – was it just to keep out the likes of 20 Minutes and Metro by building popularity for the new titles, or was there a fudge so that some circulation money would come rolling in to help cover the costs. If the latter it failed. It is obvious that for the young commuter today the paper is either free or it suffers.

The betting in Germany today is that 20 Minutes and Metro are going to break into the German market soon, and it could well be with the financial investment help of some publishers that have fought to keep them out.

For Springer, in particular, it is vitally important it gets its strategy right for it must protect at all costs the 12-million readership of its Bild newspaper, Bild, based in Hamburg, has steadily been losing circulation for years and although it is still Europe’s largest circulation newspaper with about 4 million copies daily, it is a sharp drop from the not so distant days when its circulation was more than 5 million.

Various scenarios are making the rounds. Springer said in September it was ready to launch its own free newspaper across Germany dubbed “Gratissimo” which would protect Bild by offering very cheap combined advertising rates, there are reports of a €300 million war chest to counter new free tabloid entrants; and there are other reports that it might have already signed a letter of intent with Metro to launch the brand in Germany; whereas there are other reports that Metro is looking at other German investors, as is Schibsted.

In other words, everyone seems to believe the dam keeping out free tabloids is about to burst in Germany, but no one is quite sure of the dam busters’ weapons or when it will happen.

Springer is perfectly capable of spending big money to see-off a competitor. When in 1999 Schibsted launched 20 Minutes in Cologne with a 150,000 circulation Axel Springer combined forces with DuMont Schaumburg, the local Cologne publisher, to kill the upstart – they published two free newspapers and made sure there were no local presses in the area that would print 20 Minutes. Within two years, the 20 Minutes Cologne edition was history, and the battle seemed to scar the free tabloid publishers who seemingly decided their time would be better-spent elsewhere rather than cracking their heads against the German wall.

What has renewed interest in the German markets is the World Cup Football Championships hosted in Germany next June/July. The free newspapers want to be on the ground and running well before then. Focus Money claims to have seen an internal Schibsted document that says it will launch 15 regional editions across 22 German cities in a two-phase plan. In phase 1 involving Germany’s major cities it hopes to distribute about 1.3 million copies daily and in Phase two it adds another nine cities, looking for an overall circulation of 2 million.

And it is not just Germany that has found a low charge tabloid doesn’t work. In Belgium, Espresso, the low charge sister tabloid of the popular Der Standaard Flemish publication, died after six months with a circulation of no more than 8,000.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago RedEye, published by the Tribune, will be giving competitor Red Streak, published by the Sun-Times, a black eye. Obviously if one of them gives up the 25 cent charge the other can’t be far behind.

RedEye, with a circulation of 95,000, hopes to see that become at least 105,000 this week. It is not yet profitable, having launched in 2002, but it hopes with the additional circulation and the increased advertising that it can turn a profit next year.

So in the US as well as Europe, the lesson learned seems to be that the circulation money one earns on a low charge tabloid is not worth the crimp in circulation, and therefore advertising, that making a charge creates.

Or in other words in the free tabloid world, being a little bit pregnant is not an option. You either are, or you are not.