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The often-bemoaned migration of newspaper readers to the web has, in many cases, been intentional on the part of newspaper companies, writes The New York Times.
“It’s a rational business decision of newspapers focusing on quality circulation rather than quantity,” according to Colby Atwood, president of media research firm Borrell Associates. Those newspapers have decided to shed the subscribers who cost more and generate less revenue, he says.
The move has been driven in part by advertisers. In the past, advertisers assigned more value to the occasional reader or the reader who was delivered via promotional deals. Today, advertisers are less likley to be willing to pay for a scattering of readers, preferring to reach the ultra-targeted.
Insert advertisers, especially, have been aggressive in telling newspapers that some circulation is not worthwhile.
With that in mind, some newspapers have cut their spending on advertising, cold-calling and promotional discounts as a means of signing new subscribers, all of which have always been pricey and have been getting more so. The average cost of getting a new subscriber in 2006 was $68, more than twice as much as in 2002, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
As the industry accepts that circulation is falling, they hope to find those subscribers who they can sustain with little effort. The result is that subscription churn rate has fallen from 54 percent in 2002 to 36 percent last year, the Newspaper Association of America says.
Other papers have made decisions to limit their geographic range. The Dallas Morning News, for example, stopped distribution outside a 200-mile radius last year. Weekday circulation fell 15 percent to just over 400,000. This year, the paper decided on a 100-mile limit and expects another drop in sales.
Some executives and analysts believe that newspapers have gone too far in axing investments meant to bring in new readers. John Kimball, chief marketing officer at the Newspaper Association of America says the cuts have hindered the industry’s long-term growth.
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