Declining sales of The Sun and Daily Mirror have analysts like Douglas McCabe at Enders predicting the red-top price war descending into a soaraway giveaway war before too long.
Roy Greenslade thinks it is a long way off, but you can bet that at Trinity Mirror and News International there will be ambitious sorts doing the sums and re-doing them and trying to think of a way it might just work…
Metro would argue that it is a “national freesheet” already.
from memory its overall ABC figure (including the half a dozen or so metropolitan cities it goes into), is well over 1.5 m.
[hope you are well]
Cheers, Kevin!
Well they would argue that, wouldn’t they? and while 1.5m is a lot of readers, it ain’t really a national is it?
it’s more than the mirror ;) http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/11/abcs.pressandpublishing
It will be interesting to see what happens if we do get a free Sun or Mirror.
Will there be an incentive for a distinctive brand still or will it all be about distribution slots and will the editorial follow the Metro, London Paper (and the Manchester Evening News) and basically be wire copy plus ents guides?
I guess the England football manager might be pleased at having no sports columnists painting his face on vegetables and there will be less incentive for politicians to court the editors, so as to gain screaming endorsement from an opinion leading organ, but it will be really, really boring…..
Rupert Murdoch has already made the online Wall Street Journal free, Spain has 51% of its newspaper circulation free and Sweden 32%. On a more close to home subject when you see how much the current french president Sarkozy is controlling the media then free publication may start to be more representative of free speech.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.