Free For All

So, “The Sun” has announced it’s intention to support the Conservative Party at the next General Election, “The London Evening Standard” has announced that it is to be distributed free throughout it’s circulation area and Boris has appeared in East Enders, quite a week, one way and another! All three events could be seen as examples of the media creating their own news. But these unconnected events could be much more important than they seem at first sight. 
 
Take “The Sun”’s statement. Who made the decision to support the Conservatives? The Editor? The journalists? Was a vote taken by the entire company or did the Chairman, who don’t forget was born an Australian, changed his nationality to become an American and doesn’t live in the United Kingdom, save them all the trouble and decide for them? How ever the decision was arrived at, I can’t help wondering what the grounds were for making it. Was it a marketing or a political decision? I find it difficult to believe that the choice was made on political grounds. Their support for New Labour was so strong. Either you subscribe to a political party’s beliefs or you don’t. To change sides when defeat looms for those you support doesn’t impress me and I suspect that deep down many others may think the same way. Remember what happens when a footballer returns to play against the club he played for for years? He is roundly barracked every time he returns to the scene of his former triumphs. In Liverpool and the North West the title has not been the most popular for a long time and like other papers it’s sales nationally have been in decline in recent years. Will this announcement reverse those trends? “The Sun” clearly thinks there will be a change of government colour and wants to be thought a part of that change, maybe even to have brought it about! To my mind that’s a business judgement and a marketing decision. The circulation figure will show if the judgement was a good call.
 
“The Evening Standard”’s decision to dispense with a cover price is much more interesting and potentially of greater importance; it could even open the way for an entirely new era for newspapers. For a start they must have taken into account the dismay of those who sell the paper. The National Federation of Retail Newsagents and the supermarkets will not welcome such a move. It will certainly bring about a sudden decline in cash flow. Not that the sales of the title were that high but it must encourage others to think the same way. What if all the local papers follow suit? There’s a lot of them and the amount of money lost to the retail trade would be significant. And it is not a trade that welcomes change, particularly changes that cost them money. I remember way back in nineteen seventy-eight the suggestion was mooted that newspapers should be sold through garages and supermarkets. The Unions and the NFRN raised the roof. Never! they said,. No way! they insisted, I was called into meeting after meeting at which protests were voiced. It took years to break through that opposition.
 
There are of course precedents for such monumental changes. “The Sunday Times” started a whole new media genre with the “Colour Magazine”, then by selling “Family Circle” through supermarkets sparked off a debate about the future of magazine sales. “Metro” has shown that free newspapers can survive and be taken seriously albeit in a limited area. This time though there will be the might of the supermarkets and garages to contend with as well as the NFRN, a very different kettle of fish.
 
But let’s assume that all opposition is finally overcome by mutually satisfactory financial arrangements with the distributive trades, what comes next? Free national titles financed by advertising being handed out to everyone as they go about their business? Would that reverse the decline in the circulation levels of all the titles? How would the advertising industry measure the circulation and readership figures then? It would certainly start a whole new way of thinking about newspapers and their reason to exist. All this could be happening at the same time as the head of the biggest media house is calling for news to be charged for on television, the internet and elsewhere. It seems to me we are witnessing the start of a sea change in the media business. So, I’ll stick my neck out and make a prediction. In the foreseeable future, newspapers, all of them, will copy the “Standard” and abolish their cover price and television and the internet sites will find a way to charge for news. Circulations will rise again and cause increases in marketing budgets, the cost of which will be passed on to the consumer. In effect they will paying for their newspapers in a different way… and here’s the best bit….shown the way by private enterprise, Government will realise how much money can be made from the internet and introduce a licence fee for computers and a modest charge for emails….. to help the Post Office you understand. Oh yes and mobile phones will be licensed too, just a small amount of course. All together it might even settle the national debt….in about fifty years. If you think all of this a bit far fetched you may like to consider that a few years ago the idea of the internet itself was considered fanciful; and who in the early seventies would have thought you could have a mobile phone as incredible as those we now take for granted, that would be able to connect you to anywhere in the world for such a small price?
 
Finally, Boris on East Enders. Why were so many people so cross with him for popping into the Queen Vic? He is the Mayor of London The Queen Vic is supposed to be in London. He was doing a marketing job on the perception of the Mayor of London. And he’s doing it rather well in marketing terms I think….in political terms? Well… that’s for a different sort of blog.