She said the recent single-copy price hike is the first since 2003. We’re deluding ourselves if we think advertising is going to come back. “There’s a fundamental change in the way advertisers are spending money and we need to be prepared for that,” Hasson in a telephone interview. The percentage of revenue contributed by circulation is higher than ever, Anger said, and needs to go higher still. More broadly, Anger and Hasson say they want to shift more of their overall revenue from advertisers to readers. In an effort to sell more advertising through the week, Hasson said the papers are examining the demographics of the Express Edition audience to see what kind of ads, at what kind of prices, will work better. And now there’s more movement to what we call the “power days” - they’re very valuable to the advertisers and to the readers.” “We started out with advertisers already favoring Thursday, Friday, Sunday - that’s why we picked those days. But the 93 percent is significantly higher than the 80 percent executives projected would result from cutting home delivery on the other days. Combined traffic to the papers’ Web sites is up about 10 percent year over year.Įven before the shift, the Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions were generating 77 percent of the papers’ print ad revenue.Usage of the papers’ special e-edition has held steady at about 30,000 users on days without home delivery.5 price hike for the daily paper - from 50 cents to $1 - has chased away 28 percent of single-copy buyers but has resulted in a net revenue gain. Advertising in the three home-delivered editions now account for 93 percent of the papers’ total print ad revenue.Other headlines from the experiment so far: Hasson said the papers are not yet making money but executives believe they can do so by the end of 2010. “The idea of driving to the moon and back to deliver the paper, this far into the digital age, is pretty strange.” “We’re a lot better off having done this,” Free Press Publisher and Editor Paul Anger said in a telephone interview this week. The so-called Express Editions printed on the other four days are delivered to 18,000 stores and other locations around Michigan, but not to homes. On March 30 of this year, the papers cut home delivery to just Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. 30, 2008, the Free Press was selling 605,369 papers on Sundays, and the combined average five-day weekday circulation of the Free Press and News was 476,366. 30, compared with the same period in 2008.įor the period ending Sept. The figures, provided by Janet Hasson, senior vice president for audience development and strategy, reflect the six months ending Sept. The first official numbers are in on the Detroit newspaper experiment, showing declining readership and continued financial losses in a scenario that executives insist holds potential for turn-around in 2010.īy limiting home delivery to three days a week, Detroit executives say they’re much better positioned to survive Michigan’s disastrous economy and chart a future for the papers.īy the end of 2010, the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News expect readers to provide 40 percent of their revenue, a dramatic increase from the traditional newspaper revenue split of 80 percent advertising and 20 percent circulation.įigures to be released Monday will show circulation of the Sunday Detroit Free Press down 7.5 percent and sales of the Free Press and Detroit News off as much as 15 percent on some days during the week.
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