Murdoch: "People grab (the newspaper), tear the DVD off and throw away the paper. They've got to learn. That's got to stop."

Sinclair: "These vast expenditures on CDs and DVDs, they’re like injections of yippee beans – circulation suddenly goes up only to leave you in a thoroughly depressed state if you can‘t produce as good a CD this week as you did last week. It’s not a very flattering picture of the way newspapers want to promote themselves."

The reality of giveaways is all too clear. They're are used to sell papers which then improves Audit Bureau of Circulation figures which is in turn supposed to entice advertisers into buying more pages.

But when newspaper executives admit that consumer eyes are not scanning pages, it won't take long for advertisers to realize that giveaways don't benefit them afte rall.

And apparently, they don't benefit newspapers either. The overhead on buying the giveaway products and the promotional campaigns end up costing a paper enormous amounts of money, money that won't be regained when advertisers flee.

How long can this practice last? Either all papers will reach an agreement, or one will stop and others will follow.

Marc Sands, marketing director at The Guardian, believes that the DVD giveaways that have been so poular in 2005 will be replaced by a return to "the marketing of journalism." 

Source: Follow the Media, Guardian Media