Media news website Mumbrella yesterday covered the ACCC conference held last week to consider the application by the MPA to trial new magazine supply rules. I appreciate the time they took to learn about the proposed trial and the concerns it represents for newsagents.
This the first time I can recall such public coverage of the uncompetitiveness of magazine supply to newsagents compared to our competitors. It is good to see the story out there.
Newsagents interested in the issue of magazine supply should read the Mumbrella report.
I wish the ANF would be more complete in its coverage, more transparent with newsagents. Yesterday, they published a post which I say shows the ANF acting as a mouthpiece for the MPA when they should be the mouthpiece for newsagents. In a comment to the post the ANF says: there are no plans to disallow early returns. The problem for the ANF is that rule 4 from the MPA says:
A Distributor will not be required to accept Early Returns from Retailers, except where such Early Return is made by a Retailer to correct an error in allocations quantity.
The ANF needs to stop defending the trial by saying any trial is better than no change. They need to robustly represent newsagents if they are to recover credibility from their current low point. They need to demonstrate to newsagents that they are fighting for them and not publishers.
As I told Mumbrella yesterday:
“Newsagents want to be magazine specialists, they want to be the go to place for all your special interests. That is only going to continue if we can find a way for that to be economically viable,” he said.
People at the ANF seem to think I am against change in magazine supply. Not true – I am all for change, fair change. It is unreasonable for newsagents to accept anything which does not improve our ability to compete as that is of no benefit to us.
The folks at the ANF need to realise that newsagents deserve professional, thorough and energetic leadership – backed with open communication.
On the ANF website yesterday the ANF appeared to suggest the no early returns was for the purpose of this trial only. The documentation submitted to the ACCC by the MPA does not indicate that. Further, if this was the case the MPA members could have ensured fair supply and therefore seen early returns decline – and negated the need for the trial. Publishers do not trust this will happen because magazine distributors Gotch and Network have driven newsagents to use early returns as the only reasonable in-store magazine management tactic.
Finally, I have heard from several newsagents that they have been approached by ANF representatives to discuss this matter and the ANF reps comment about what I have written here. To date, no one from the ANF has contacted me on this issue.
While we have a new issue of Woman’s Day and a refreshed New Idea covering the birth of royal baby, UK magazine Hello is also out with its coverage of the birth and the baby. I suspect Hello will be more interesting to some customers. I see many shoppers purchase Hello for royal coverage. It has a reputation for a style and level of coverage on subjects such as this which is spectacular. The difference compared to local product is due to the much bigger audience in the UK where Hello is published.
