UK: Does part-paid part-free circulation work: Manchester Evening News

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on March 5, 2008 at 9:46 AM

In 2006, when the Manchester Evening News (MEN) decided to split its circulation into partly free and partly paid-for, few analysts would have bet on the strategy's success. But according to Follow the Media's Philip Stone, MEN's strategy has succeeded in increasing its total circulation by 34%, up to 180,000 copies, nearly 100,000 of which are free.

On the other hand, the Evening News is giving away more copies than it is selling, whereas it had expected a third of copies to be given away and two thirds to be paid for.

So although MEN increased its circulation, its print circulation revenues are lower than expected. In the past year, MEN's paid circulation fell 13.5%, and was down 6.4% in the past six months - the worst paid-for sales performance of any UK regional paper.

Granted, thanks to the increased circulation, MEN increased its national ad revenue by 8% in the first year after the move.

"The question, of course, is how many of those 81,000 remaining paid-fors can he hold onto," concluded Stone.

Or whether MEN will compensate for declining paid-for circulation through online revenues, thanks to the 73,300 daily unique users it now attracts to its website.

Read here about how MEN integrated and converged its media outlets and newspapers around its flagship title.

Source: Follow the Media