The London Afternoon/Evening market has how (as of Monday) become a completely free model with the last bastion of cash, The Evening Standard, giving up the paid for model in favour of a free model.
It was a fairly disparate market and more crowded twelve months ago, but it’s a homogenous one now will all the lasting publications opting to be given away.
The Standards MD suggested that out of the 235,998 copies claimed in the ABC, they got revenue from around 100,000. At the counter the paper sold for 50p which, after deductions possibly netted them in or around 40p a copy which equates to £40,000 a day to be found or £12.5m a year.
The MD noted that £5m would be saved immediately from the marketing budget – suggesting there is to be little or no marketing for the brand in future.
But there is still £7.5m to be found elsewhere and that’s just to be back in a reported loss making position!
Heaping more pressure on the commercial department the owners stated that by upping the print run to 600k an evening will leave them:
in a much better place to grow revenue than if we had a paid-for model
The London Lite and the Evening Standard will slug it out for readers and, more importantly, advertising revenue alone as thelondonpaper finished its print edition three weeks back.
It’s certainly a space to watch. Will it give us any guidance of insight as to what will happen here? One thing is that we have to wait for the report of the Competition Authority on the proposed merger of the Herald AM and Metro which, if denied, would throw up all sorts of problems/possibilities to the interested parties.
