The youth-oriented tabloid distributed in or around a mass transit system has gotten most of the attention in the free daily world. For one thing, it’s the model used by Metro International, the world’s largest and best-known free daily publisher. It’s also the model in use in major US cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, all of which have extensive mass transit networks and large populations of young people.
But should publishers be paying more attention to the adult-targeted, home delivery model, most closely associated in this country with Philip Anschutz’s Clarity Media? After all, most US and Canadian cities don’t have robust mass transit systems. And most established publishers have yet to offer an alternative to those adult readers who have been dropping their subscriptions at a steady rate over the past few decades.
The fear, I’m guessing, is that developing a product that would more clearly meet the needs of a traditional newspaper reader who is dissatisfied with the bulk and format of the traditional broadsheet daily would lead to a faster erosion of that daily’s subscription base.
It might be instructive to look at how someone outside the newspaper industry approached a similar problem. In a June 21 story, the New York Times reports that TGI Friday's, faced with the same decline in sales experienced by others in the casual-dining industry, decided to introduce smaller portions at lower prices. The result: the number of customers increased at Friday's during the last 16 weeks by 1.4 percent, the Times reported, compared with same period year earlier. For the entire casual-dining industry, guest counts were down by 2.8 percent during period.
As Jim Smith of Morris has noted, the San Diego Union Tribune’s Today’s Local News has 70,000 circulation, most of that home-delivered. Might that be an interesting model for paid daily publishers to consider adding to their product portfolios? After all, if you are a paid daily publisher and someone is looking to eat your lunch, shouldn't it be you?
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