If anyone had any doubts about how the 1990s war for Orange County newspaper readers turned out, consider the latest numbers.
As of March 30, The Orange County Register had daily circulation of 300,972, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Register’s Sunday circulation is 363,907.
The Los Angeles Times, which battled the Register here for years, doesn’t report OC numbers to the Audit Bureau anymore. But advertising industry sources say the paper’s OC edition has daily circulation of 177,136 and 248,147 on Sundays.
For the Times, that’s down from a daily peak here of about 200,000 and a Sunday high of 300,000 in the mid-1990s. Back then the Times and Register were in a block-by-block news battle for readers,and advertisers,in OC.
The two dailies insist their rivalry still is on. But the war has gone from hot to cold with a shift toward regional coverage at the Times after its 2000 acquisition by Chicago’s Tribune Co. The Times declined to comment on OC-specific circulation and readership numbers.
Many in OC call the Times’ move a pullback,and a victory for the Register.
“The Register’s circulation lead continues to expand,” said N. Christian Anderson III, chief executive and publisher of the Register, part of Irvine-based Freedom Communica-tions Inc. “But it is a tough fight every day. (The Times) spends millions of dollars in marketing and promotions and continues heavily discounting its subscriptions in Orange County.”
If Anderson doesn’t sound like he’s declaring absolute victory, it’s because the Register’s win is less than absolute.
To be sure, the Santa Ana-based paper stood its ground against the Times for years and prevailed as Orange County’s daily paper.
Bigger Battle
But now the long-running fight between the papers has taken a back seat to a bigger battle. Both the Register and the Times have seen their circulations steadily drop in the past 10 years, except for a bounce in the go-go days of the late 1990s and 2000.
The Register, whose circulation almost entirely is in OC, has lost readers too. The Register is off by about 15%, or 54,000 readers, from the mid-1990s.
Some loss of readers has been planned, the papers contend, some not.
Of course, the Register and Times aren’t alone. Daily newspapers nationally continue to see readers bypass them for the Internet, television and specialty publications.
The fight has taken a turn for the worse.
The largest papers reported an average drop of about 2% in daily circulation for the six months ended March 30, according to the Audit Bureau, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based group that tracks circulation.
“It’s the biggest drop in a decade,” said Jennifer Saba, associate editor at trade publication Editor & Publisher in New York. “I don’t think there’s any way they can reverse this.”
Second-tier papers, such as the Register, fared better. The paper reported a 3% drop in daily circulation and was off 2.8% on Sundays.
The Times saw the second biggest loss nationally after Tribune’s flagship Chicago Tribune. The Times reported a 6.5% fall in daily circulation to 907,997 and 7.9% drop on Sunday to 1.2 million.
The Register and Times both cited the national do-not-call list, which hampers telemarketing, for part of their declines.
“Like most metropolitan newspapers, the Register has relied heavily on telemarketing for new customers,” the Register’s Anderson said.
The Times said it was particularly hard hit by the telemarketing ban. Almost half of its database in Southern California was wiped out, said Jack Klunder, the Times’ senior vice president of circulation.
“All businesses that relied on telemarketing as a major source of business were impacted,” Klunder said. “In the past two years, every business has had to transition out of that as your primary source of new customers and into new sales channels.”
For decades, circulation has been critical for papers. It makes up about 20% of a paper’s sales and helps determine how much a paper can charge for advertising, which accounts for 80% of revenue.
That’s one reason “the majority of Wall Street will likely continue to view any decline in newspaper circulation as a negative,” wrote analyst Bill Drewery in a recent Credit Suisse First Boston report.
But executives at the Register, Times and other papers are talking less about circulation these days and more about readers.
It’s not as much about how many papers you sell anymore, they say, but the quality of readers you deliver to advertisers.
“I don’t want to give you the impression that advertisers don’t care about circulation, they do,” said John Kimball, chief marketing officer at the Newspaper Association of America in Vienna, Va. “But newspapers sell readers. It is about how many were read and who reads them.”
Stressing Readership
Readership,a broader measure that includes several people who might look at one paid copy of a paper,”has remained steady,” Kimball said.
The Register’s daily OC readership is up 6% to nearly 775,000 readers in the past year, according to a study by New York-based Scarborough Research, Anderson said. Sunday readership is up 7% to 961,000, he said.
The same report found the Times’ daily OC readership dropped 15% to about 306,000 and 14% to 462,000 on Sundays in the period, according to Anderson.
The Times and the Register both have made changes to their circulation efforts,in and outside OC.
After the 2000 acquisition by Tribune, the Times cut circulation staff from its Costa Mesa operation and shifted workers to Los Angeles, the paper’s Klunder said.
More recently, the Times has sought to offset circulation drops by increasing direct mail and door-to-door and kiosk sales, Klunder said.
The paper also launched a marketing campaign and shifted its sales tactics, he said. That hurt circulation in the short run but is expected to pay off down the road, according to Klunder.
The Times now is pushing three-day sales packages,advertising in the Friday, Saturday and Sunday editions,instead of seven-day buys, Klunder said.
“Eighty percent of newspapers’ profitability is captured at the back end of the week,” he said. “Readers are telling you they like a shorter package, and the advertisers are telling you that’s where they want to place their ad dollars.”
Klunder, who worked at the Times before, also is part of the paper’s effort. The former senior vice president of circulation at MediaNews Group Inc.’s Los Angeles papers was brought back to spearhead the Times’ counteroffensive.
“The Times has been significantly underperforming L.A.’s other two major daily newspapers,” wrote Credit Suisse First Boston’s Drewery, referring to the Register and MediaNews Group’s Los Angeles Daily News.
Drewery called the Times’s circulation losses “worrisome.”
Klunder said Times officials want him “to grow the number back.”
“Cut costs, grow revenue, the usual stuff,” he said. “Circulation all by itself is a challenge even when things are running smoothly. It’s a more competitive market then it’s ever been.”
Register Changes
The Register has made its own changes. A number of them led to a planned circulation drop, according to Anderson.
The paper cut most circulation outside OC in 2001 and 2002, and “eliminated some acquisition methods inside Orange County which had contributed to high levels of customer churn,” Anderson said.
Other changes include recently expanding home delivery to Belmont Shores in Long Beach after pulling out of the area a few years back.
The Register said it plans to use distribution centers in Orange and Garden Grove more efficiently.
But Anderson said the Register has no plans of expanding beyond its existing areas.
“The Register uses a variety of acquisition and retention methods and is continuing to refine those methods,” Anderson said.
The paper also has been “very focused on acquiring long-term subscribers in the best demographics for our advertisers,” Anderson said.
The Register sells nearly all of its ads to local and regional business, Anderson said.
“They measure the effectiveness of their advertising in any medium on one basis: Does the cash register ring?” Anderson said. “In the case of the Register, local and regional advertisers know we are incredibly effective for them.”
Register parent Freedom, privately owned by members of the founding Hoiles family and investment banks Blackstone Group LP and Providence Equity Partners Inc., doesn’t disclose profit numbers. But an executive recently said profits were up in the “double digits” last year, thanks to higher ad sales.
|
|
||
