Tuesday, Aug 06, 2013

It is not everyday a Royal Baby is born in England to boost newspaper sales. British newspapers are much more dependent on kiosk sales than on subscriptions.

There are way too many newspapers competing for too few readers. The big ones — Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Independent, Times and The Guardian — represent a fifth of the circulation numbers.

At the same time, digital subscriptions are growing. According to Reuters Institute, 9 per cent of the UK’s readers pay for the news. In 2012, it was 4 per cent. Unfortunately, digital subscriptions are not enough to offset a decline in print advertising.

To revert this situation, newspapers have come up with aggressive offers; for example Daily Telegraph is offering Kindle for a year’s subscription. Others are packaging digital and print editions at a discount.

The fight for readers is competitive. The Sun had launched a digital subscription platform offering an entertainment package that includes a Goals app, a deal to show Premier League football highlights on mobile and Internet. It’s called Sun+ and comes for just two pounds.

“Asking readers to pay for content is the only way to protect the future of the newspaper industry,” The Sun’s new editor David Dinsmore was quoted as saying.

The Telegraph Media Group partnered with Vodafone UK to launch a price plan that includes an iPad, 2GB Internet access and a daily digital subscription to the Telegraph, for a monthly fee of £35.

The Guardian offers different packages. It is possible to subscribe to an all-inclusive package, just the print version or the applications with a two-week free trial.

For the record, the birth of the Royal Baby provided the biggest ever audience for the UK media. Traffic on newspapers and other media websites rose almost 50 per cent.

UK web traffic for news and media websites hit 94 million unique users on Monday — the average is 64 million — ahead of the Boston bombings (85 million) and Diamond Jubilee (57 million), according to The Guardian.

Celebrity gossip

Gossip sells well. Tabloid newspapers mix up celebrity gossip, sensationalism and sports to sell copies everyday. According to ABC’s auditing, June’s circulation for The Sun was 2.24 million, Daily Mail had 1.8 million, and Daily Mirror’s was 1.038. The Guardian, well known for the quality of information, has only 187,000 copies a day.

Charlie Beckett from The Guardian has an explanation: “There is also a British sentimentality that celebrates the myths of a Blitz spirit, royal romance and sporting prowess - before indulging in that other national pastime, of lamenting our fall from grace. I suspect the real reason we love them is the same reason we love binge drinking and fox hunting; it’s a national delight in base pleasure and ritual cruelty”.

By Douglas Okasaki

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