London Lite to become latest freesheet to close

Posted by Emma Heald on October 27, 2009 at 3:32 PM

Associated Newspapers' freesheet the London Lite is to close, reported the Guardian. Its parent company, which is owned by the Daily Mail & General Trust, made the announcement two weeks after the Evening Standard went free and a month after News International's thelondonpaper closed.

Both the London Lite and thelondonpaper, which launched within days of each other in the summer of 2006, had been suffering financially and were making considerable losses earlier this year. The closure of thelondonpaper, in line with owner Rupert Murdoch's opposition to the idea of giving away content, could have meant good news for its rival the London Lite, but it seems that profits did not increase enough, and another free rival emerged, in the form of of the Evening Standard.

DMGT has a minority holding in the Evening Standard, having sold 75% of the paper to a consortium headed by Alexander Lebedev earlier this year. The decision to take the 182-year-old daily free prompted speculation about the future of the London Lite, but the move was said to be made with the support of Associated Newspapers. The Standard's distribution has more than doubled from 250,000 to 600,000 and it has made several distribution deals with stations and shops.

The paper's closure puts 36 jobs at risk. The Guardian reported that a consultation with the employees would occur before a final decision was made about job cuts.

So London has now been left with two city-wide free dailies, Metro (also owned by Associated Newspapers) in the mornings and the Evening Standard in the afternoons. Will these both last? Overseas, Germany has just lost its last free daily, SZ Primetime, and the number of countries worldwide with free daily newspapers has fallen from 59 to 56.

Source: Guardian