4 cents to 5 dollars in 60 years: As cover prices go up, newsprint’s time is running out
Sixty years to the day that James Manning was selling newspapers in cents for the first time, the price of the Newscorp Sunday papers hit $5. Here the industry veteran opines that publishers are not doing enough to sell PDF versions of papers.
The price of Australia’s biggest-selling newspapers jumped 11% on Sunday.
The dwindling number of customers who still present themselves to a newsagent, supermarket or petrol station on a Sunday morning for their copies of The Sunday Telegraph or the Sunday Herald Sun didn’t get any change back from a $5 note after the price jumped 50c from $4.50.
The price would have broken $5 for many if buying from an outlet that puts a surcharge on credit card purchases. (I should point out too in Sydney the News Corp product is still cheaper than Nine Publishing’s The Sun-Herald which broke the $5 note barrier some time ago, with a cover price of $5.20.)
Publishers need to keep a printed product going for as long as they can to keep the ad revenue bubbling along. But they are not prepared to absorb the cost base increases they suffer each year, so they try and recoup those costs from cover price rises — which some of the rusted-on print audience will pay.
So how’s that going for the Nightly, James? They market themselves as having a digital replica of a printed paper. Yesterday they had three paid ads and one house ad in a 38-page digital edition.
I give it to 2030 and News Corp will pull the pin on printing papers in Australia. Factory leases in Melbourne and contracts with Channel 9 newspapers will be up by then. Print figures decline by approximately 10% per year. 150,000 Sun Tele per week now. 80,000 week day Tele. Won’t be much left soon.