Media
WORTHLESS: The Aged sells for 12 cents a copy in desperate giveaway
Age Insider blows the lid on subscription discounting
How and why you can stop paying full price for The Age, from today.
There’s something very, very wrong at The Age. And we’re not talking about the ongoing quality issues caused by last year’s job-shedding for once. Nor are we referring to the historic – and now irreversible – decline of classified advertising. We’re also done with Messrs Churchill, Ramadge, Money and Carbone for the time being. Today, we’re talking about a mysterious tip-off from sources close to The Age that provides an unprecedented level of detail about the extraordinary discounts being offered to prop up The Age’s dwindling circulation.
Our deep throat has sent us a catalogue of web links to The Age’s online home delivery ordering service. The pages you are about to see are not behind firewalls, we wouldn’t knowingly break the law by breaking into The Age’s servers. No, these pages are in the public domain but are sprinkled in amongst so many thousands of other pages that an ordinary punter would be hard pressed to find them. You’d better check them out quickly though, because once these links go up, we’re confident The Age will want to stop you from seeing them. Won’t you, boys?
Take a look for yourself and see that if you’re still one of the few people paying full price for The Age, you can save some serious money. From today.
WHAT IS THE AGE REALLY WORTH?
First, take a look at what we call their “idiot’s” offer. At $1.14 per copy, it appears acceptable value, because it’s far cheaper than the newsagency price, but it is in fact much dearer than the deals you’ll find as you go deeper and deeper into age.com.au territory. Without much effort, almost anybody will be able to pay a fraction of that price if they want to.
For a start, you could go and join the Vintage Cellars Wine Club. It’s free to join – all you have to do is buy some wine. And from the moment you enter your membership number at The Age’s subscription site, you’re entitled to claim 7 days a week home delivery for just 65 cents a copy. It’s a 20 week offer, but how hard do you reckon they’ll try to hold onto your business at the end of that 20 weeks?
Then again, if you’re any kind of tertiary student, you can claim the weekend deal that gives you the Saturday and Sunday edition for just 65 cents per copy. Not bad, but you can still do better.
For example, if you’re a member at a Fitness First gym, your membership number is the key to unlocking a deal that gives you The Age four days a week for an astonishing 28.3 cents per copy. Deal or No Deal? If you said “No Deal”, you’re on the money. Because a couple of other membership organisations have – inexplicably – wangled even better deals still.
Like the Melbourne Racing Club (the old VATC at Caulfield) for instance. Quote your MRC membership number at The Age website and you’ll pay just 25 cents per copy for The Age from Thursday to Sunday. Considering that the weekend editions are the most expensive, that’s very cheap. Although, I’d be a little peeved if I was a Melbourne Racing Club member and found out that my neighbour, who is in the YMCA, was paying just 23.5 cents for the same editions.
Likewise the person who belongs to the Palace Cinemas Movie Club, who can order The Age to be home delivered on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the same 23.5 cents.
WHAT A WICKED WEB WE WEAVE
Which led us to ask, why all these different prices?
Our deep throat declined to provide further detail, other than to say that you’d have to look at exactly who at The Age did those deals, when they were done and how desperate they were to boost circulation at the time.
That being the case, you’d have to think they were incredibly desperate to do the latest deals with Melbourne and StKilda AFL Clubs and the Melbourne Victory Soccer Club. Because these people can get four days of The Age each week for a breathtaking 12 cents a copy. VEXNEWS admits to not knowing much about the economics of newspaper publishing, but we’d have to think this was well below the actual cost of printing and delivering those newspapers. The newsagent cops about that much home-deliver the thing so it’s a very expensive way of pretending your paid circulation is higher than it is.
So, please, if you’re a Demons, Saints or Victory supporter, get out there and do the right thing: subscribe to The Age and send them broke.
OK, OK. Right now some of you are rightly pointing out that you have to pay membership fees to belong to many of these organisations, so the true cost of these subscriptions isn’t as low as they sound. Except, as we pointed out above, the Vintage Cellars deal can potentially be yours for the price of a cheap case of plonk.
And when we checked with our local YMCA fitness centre for this investigation, it turns out you can purchase an eligible swimming membership for just $22.
So, all you fitness fanatics, get out there and get yourself an Age subscription for less than a fifth of its actual retail price.
Or if you can’t be bothered, try visiting your local newsagent and asking for the special $5 per week deal that most newsagents have access to. Barry, our local paper chucker is certainly in on that deal, so we can only reiterate that if you must insist on subscribing to the Leftard’s Friend, please, please, don’t pay full price.
Or better still, buy The Australian. It might not be as cheap, but as with most things, you get what you pay for.
THE OFFERS
“Idiot’s” offer
7 days
52 weeks
$416
$1.14 per copy
Newsagency offer
7 days
52 weeks
$260
$0.714 per copy
Not available via internet – newsagent only
Fitness First
4 days
52 weeks
$59
$0.283 per copy
Melbourne Racing Club (Caulfield)
4 days
52 weeks
$52
$0.25 per copy
Melbourne Football Club
4 days
52 weeks
$25
$0.12 per copy
Palace Cinemas Movie Club
4 days
52 weeks
$49
$0.235 per copy
StKilda Football Club
4 days
52 weeks
$25
$0.12 per copy
Weekend Offer for Uni Students
Saturday & Sunday
20 weeks
$39
$0.65 per copy
Vintage Cellars Wine Club
7 days
20 weeks
$100
$0.714 per copy
Melbourne Victory Soccer Club
4 days
52 weeks
$25
$0.12 per copy
YMCA members
4 days
52 weeks
$49
$0.235 per copy
Discussion
25 comments for “WORTHLESS: The Aged sells for 12 cents a copy in desperate giveaway”
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I am a reader of ‘The Age’ however the sorry state of the newspaper does not surprise me at all. I used to subscribe, all went well for about a year then the delivery just stopped, no explaination. Then we managed to re-establish supply, then it stopped. Then I responded to an offer via the Carlton Footy Club, filled in the form faxed it off, nothing happened. Called them, assured delivery would start in fourteen days, nothing happened. Subscribed online, nothing happened. About three months ago, doorknocked, signed up, filled in form nothing nothing happened, called them, nothing has happened. I have never seen a newspaper work so hard to destroy its own circulation. If The Age wants to know what is going wrong it should perhaps start with a good long look at its cut price subscription and distribution. Like I said I love The Age but cannot seem to get a delivery.
The Herald-Sun’s only use is to wipe loose stools of rectums.
Enjoy the site, but this is a little hysterical, mate. There’s plenty of dodgy deals around the place from BOTH Fairfax and News Limited. And much dodgier in some circumstances, like some of the circulation deals through universities, airlines, Starbucks stores, etc.
I’m really not sure these “secret” deals you’ve “exposed” are that outrageous compared to some others, including the Herald Sun, The Australian and other News titles.
If Jason Whittaker “Journalist” is going to defend Fairfax with the “meh,they both do it” argument, then why doesn’t he gather up and present the evidence like VEX has? My take on this story is that these deals are a much bigger component of the age’s daily circulation than anyone realises. A friend of mine at Melbourne FC reckons around 7,000 club members are on that 12 cent deal. That’s 3.5% of the age’s audited circulation according to their last public statement. So when you add all these other deals to the mix, how much of the age’s claimed 200,000 number is actually real people choosing to buy a paper?
Hah, an entire article by Vexnews encouraging people to go out and subscribe to The Age… Never thought I’d see the day!
Good to see you’ve seen the light, comrade. Now all together… ”Arise, wretched of the Earth…” We’ll have you waving your red book yet.
Palace Membership which by it’s self is very good value costs $14 PA for two years.
Hey vexnews. We turned off those links, so good luck with your “expose” now. Hah!
You neglect to point out that $15 of the demons members’ $25 fee goes straight to the demons. Making it $10 for the Age (5c per copy) and a $15 donation to my footy team!
Why do I need to present evidence, Fair’s Fair? And why does my job position require inverted commas? They both do it. They both admit to doing it. Is it dodgy? Yes. But really, who cares??
This is not the ball game. Both Fairfax and News have to develop a sustainable business case for online news. Propping up falling circulation figures is not a long-term answer. They’re both too stupid to realise this.
It’s pretty obvious The Age have made a conscience decision that getting revenue from the sale of newspapers is irrelevant. The main aim is to simply build the number of subscribers up so as to attract advertising revenue which will more than counter the fall in revenue from newspaper sales.
It’s not as though any of us pay for our local rags which all survive solely on advertising revenue. The problem of course with this strategy is people don’t really care for the paper if they barely pay for it which means it will simply go in the bin without even a look in half the time…similar to our local rags.
“2 in a row” – of the 5 cents one pays for their newspaper after money goes over to the Demons, how much of that do you think goes to the newsagent?
I work in a city office and a few months ago a pile of ‘The Australian” started appearing in the foyer every morning. Free to anyone who wants a copy, so that is a pretty cheap offer.
You would have to actually pay me to read The Age, though.
Hmmm. Jason, mate, if you have to ask “Why do I need to present evidence?” you might just have missed the point. Good luck with your “journalism” career.
Someone, long time ago said the Age was a fine paper. Wrong. It’s never been a fine paper. It had some fine moments but fundamentally it’s always been a mawkish paper, useful only for recycling – once it’s been printed. The Age can be used for several good things – reading isn’t one of those – such as weed mat; albeit the amount of lead and other left toxins especially content wise it contains, probably it would be better not use it for weed mat either. The best thing, even better than recycling is not to print it at all. The Age will die, but I fear not! The Age’s left elite will fool someone else to hire them. We will see the end of Age but not the end of it. Who’s next, Faifax?
thats why you dont buy the age
One of the best recent innovations at the Age was their Friday form guide. Heaps btter then the Herald-Sun. Now I get a ltter from the Age telling me that The Form Guide will now only be available online. Well keeping with their logic why don’t I just read the Age online (or any other newspaper) and other paper come to think of it.
There are already a myriad of formguides out there so why do I keep having the Age land on my doorstep each day? Good question and one I shall address immediately.
Well I just rang up and cancelled after receiving The Age home delivered for since 1998. Let’s see what sort of offers they try and tempt me back with.
It will be strange not to have a newspaper bouncing on the front lawn each morning.
I was going to suspend my delivery online but that webpage (along with the subscribe page) is currently unavailable.
Bill Collins you are a grubby little wanker.
Well if I start name calling at least I shall be “The Accurate One”.
The age should go bust such a rag!
In the days of the Age being sold by telemarketers, I always enjoyed telling the caller that I would not have the rag delivered to our place even if they paid us to take it. They never seemed hurt or suprised so I guess mine was a common reaction. I’m enjoying its slow and painful demise.
Vex, you are a f$cking idiot.
Vex, you are a f$cking idiot.
What would you spend your days doing if you didnt have the Age to hate?
Laugh all you want. Newspapers are the only legitimate source of news. Radio, TV, the interweb – everyone still works from the agenda papers set.
Ever listened to ABC’s biggest bulletin, at 745am. Do it with a copy of a paper (preferably a broadsheet) next to you.
Laugh all you want. It will be a sad day when real news dies because free loaders only want to click.
Someone from The Aged knocked on my door tonight trying to sell their paper – $24 per month for 3 months, paper delivered everyday. Catch is it goes up to full price after the 3 months unless you tell them to cancel the delivery.