Media
INFLATED: The Age’s long circulation con continues
Left-wing newspaper The Age is in deep crisis, continuing to mask its collapse in real circulation with an extensive array of tricks calculated to deceive advertisers.
At the Melbourne Writers’ Festival from Friday, many thousands of copies of the newspaper were dumped at the entrance of events and recorded as sold with every single ticket purchased.
As the photograph taken by a VEXNEWS photographer patriot records, the proportion of the audience taking the newspaper with them was not especially high.
The Festival is just one of the ways The Age has propped up the massive decline in the number of copies it sells. The Melbourne Racing Club in Caulfield, gymnasiums, AFL football clubs, Starbucks patrons and many others receive very deep discounts on the newspaper.
Industry insiders tell VEXNEWS that The Age’s real Monday to Friday circulation is no more than 130,000 copies.
Recent numbers from Fairfax’s “Metro papers in Sydney and Melbourne” had company CEO David Kirk declaring:
Metro publishing revenues were weaker, with total revenues reflecting continued advertising weakness, particularly in Sydney. Melbourne market conditions were stronger but did weaken in the second half of the year. Circulation was strong with The Age a particular highlight.
The numbers are blatantly inflated. The dimension of the fraud is quite breathtaking with industry publications reflecting on the “gains” made by The Age despite an overall decline in newspaper sales that’s occurred everywhere:
The Age was among the newspapers bucking the overall trend. Its circulation has increased by 0.5% Monday to Friday to 208,000, by 0.2% on Saturdays to 301,500 and by 1.1% on Sundays to 227,500. The Monday to Friday circulation figure is the highest The Age has recorded since 1997, and the 227,500 figure registered for The Sunday Age is its highest since the newspaper was launched in 1989, according to the newspaper’s owner, Fairfax Media.
A wicked web they weave.
Former Age writer Jonathan Green has been sticking in the knife and twisting it at his former place of employ.
He has complained The Age’s notorious staff canteen has been ordered to shut at 5pm recently by The Age’s CEO Don Churchill.
Green has reported confidential briefings from Churchill to middle managers that classifieds revenue is going to continue to rapidly decline at the Age and that substantial spending cuts will be necessary.
Advertisers aren’t stupid. They can see right through the puffed up circulation numbers.
Green’s old chums – under increasing scrutiny at the paper by Deputy Editor and hatchet man Paul Ramadge – at the paper have told him:
The financial year has only just begun, but already ad sales are lagging. Last week’s classified result missed budget by $500,000. So far for the current financial year advertising revenue is lagging budget by some $3 million, a shortfall that would equate to some $600,000 in profit according to sources in the paper’s commercial arm.
The Age’s solution according to Andrew Landeryou, whose blog broke the story about the newspaper kicking back travel gifts to certain decision-makers in advertising, has been to substantially increase the amount of largesse it provides to those in charge of ad spends at ad agencies and real estate agents and so on.
Green confirms Landeryou’s exclusive:
The Age’s advertising director, British import David Hoath, has been nothing if not phlegmatic in the face of these sagging results.
Hoath is just back in the Spencer Street HQ tanned, if exhausted, after hosting a freebie for 70 Melbourne real estate agents over 10 days in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Next week he is off to a Vietnam resort with a brace of display advertising clients. Then it’s Mauritius with car dealers. Senior staff estimate the accumulated costs of these loyalty reward freebies in the vicinity of $2.5 million.
And never mind the sagging performance, ad sales staff still lined up last month to receive a brace of monthly $500 performance bonuses.
Discussion
4 comments for “INFLATED: The Age’s long circulation con continues”
Post a comment
Sound very much like QANTAS, “the uncompassionate airline” that is very quick to cancel FF points that have been saved up for decades and just when they are reaching maturity. QANTAS executives are quick to remove them.
Loyalty is a word unkown in the corporate executive boardrooms when faced with every increasing costs that impact on their own profits.
This raises an interesting set of issues. I saw this tactic employed in the UK, too. As newspaper circulation falls and advertising moves online, papers find that giveaways to boost circulation stablise their advertising charge. But is it sustainable? Another big issue is classifieds, which are melting away altogether.
How much CO2 is emitted in the production of a newspaper, then the delivery and disposal of it?
Wouldn’t it be prudent to halt all production if this production is found to produce those nasty, nasty green house gases?
[...] are sending a signal to the upper management about the declining quality of the rag. Even though they frequently lie about their [...]