News Ltd is surveying newsagents, in some states at least, on home delivery costs including distance covered in delivering newspapers, time spent delivering newspapers, time spent wrapping newspapers, number of vehicles used and a bunch of other data about home delivery. This data has been gathered many times over recent years by newspaper publishers and industry associations. Excuse me for being cynical but this seems like more busy work for the newsagent.
News only has to look at the home delivery runs handed back by newsagents this year to determine the costs. My understanding is that nationally, close to 200 newsagents have handed back their home delivery business.
Many newsagents want to continue to provide a home delivery service. For this to be achieved, they need fair compensation for their efforts.
I wonder if the survey has anything to do with reported research into making News Ltd newspapers free?
7 responses so far ↓
1 anon // Apr 14, 2009 at 5:11 PM
Apparently Cairns Post are having a name change in a couple of months. Maybe just jumping at shadows ????
2 Y&G // Apr 14, 2009 at 6:42 PM
The last time we saw our rep was in relation to this, a couple of months ago. Actually, it was the first time all year we’d seen him….
3 paul // Apr 14, 2009 at 8:14 PM
Typical blog post with no facts to support it’s angle on things. This is really D grade stuff Mark ,they actually called it “over analysed” in one part . What they didn’t touch on much was how are you going to distribute something that is well free , that’s the hard bit.
4 Mark // Apr 14, 2009 at 9:14 PM
Paul, They make it clear they are drawing bits of information together to pose the question.
In the US Examiner newspapers publishes daily in several cities and distributes through free home delivery.
Here, in Australia, MX is free.
5 Shayne // Apr 15, 2009 at 1:09 PM
Food for thought. A free daily paper means circulation would increase 5,6,7 fold. Home deliverys also, as not many would say no to a free home delivered paper 7 days a week. Woolworths et al will not carry the free paper unless they get paid a motza for doing so. If representatives of newsagents can get the publishers to pay us a reasonable fee for the real estate the free paper will occupy, plus a reasonable fixed rate (say 50c) for every home delivered paper, we may actually be better off.
Just a thought…..
6 Luke // Apr 16, 2009 at 2:50 PM
What if the publishers tell us that they will pay 5c per copy to deliver and nothing for it to sit on the shelf and they hold us to our distribution contracts that say we need to give 6 months notice to cancel them. You could not trust news, fairfax et al as far as you can throw them.
Just a thought
7 shaun s // Apr 16, 2009 at 4:12 PM
Luke i reckon there would be whole lot of miss deliverys going on if that was the case
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