Free Daily Newspapers Complement Their Paid Counterparts.

Dr. James Collins, Senior Vice President of Information Systems and Custom Analytics, Scarborough Research and Dr. Kathleen Mahoney, Research Director for Strategic Planning, The New York Times, presented their analysis of free daily newspaper readership at the 2005 Worldwide Readership Research Symposium in Prague.

Using Scarborough’s newspaper audience and related information, the analysis examined the impact of free daily newspapers on the readership of paid dailies in four major United States markets.

Free dailies, introduced a decade ago in Europe (earlier than in the U.S.), have combined circulations in the U.S. of approximately two million and as such are an emerging force in the market for printed news. Their owners, both traditional paid as well as dedicated free newspaper companies, are targeting younger and more ethnically diverse populations, generally groups with below-average levels of newspaper readership.

The study’s findings suggest that these strategies are meeting with some measure of success – that free readers are generally younger and more ethnically diverse than paid readers on average – but that most readers of free dailies are also reading one or more paid dailies. “Simply stated, most free daily readers are strong newspaper readers – both free and paid,” said Dr. Collins. “Rather than competing with their paid counterparts, free dailies are being used in a complementary fashion by most of their readers. This represents a real opportunity for paid publishers to touch their consumers in different ways and at different moments throughout their days. And, free-only publishers are able to offer their smaller local advertisers a cost effective way to establish a print presence.”

Not surprisingly, the readership of free newspapers is very much related to the distribution strategies each employs. “In markets such as New York, Boston and Chicago with substantial mass-transit systems, the free dailies organize their distribution around major stations and terminals, so their reader largely reflects the ridership,” commented Dr. Mahoney. “One of the challenges for the free dailies is to align the distribution with the target audience. For instance, to better attract a younger audience a number of the free dailies are distributing in and around college and university campuses, particularly in Boston.”

Of particular interest to free daily publishers are the readers who are choosing to read only their newspapers, not paid ones.

“Perhaps the most interesting group of free daily readers are the ones choosing to read only the free papers,” comments Dr. Collins. “These readers are from groups that paid newspapers have, more recently, had a difficult time appealing to – the young, those from lower to moderate income households and non-white ethnic groups. The extent to which free dailies are
able to expand the universe of newspaper readers is significant to an industry which has experienced constant or even declining market conditions for the last three decades.”

“The attractiveness of free newspapers as a secondary product for paid dailies varies by market in the US, but the emergence of this new print product is a development that has at least sparked some new thinking on reaching the audience,” echoed Dr. Mahoney.

For more information at http//www.scarborough.com