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Ming
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quote:
Originally posted by Wezil
I call BS.
Cite please. |
While I would agree with your BS... they are having some problems 
The following report comes from the Globe and Mail, so there may be a tad bit of bias in their reporting.
quote:
Circulation of The Toronto Sun has dropped sharply, eroded by a price increase, the hockey lockout and a hotly competitive market that has seen freebie papers directly target its key commuter market.
The tabloid, once tagged The Little Paper that Grew, saw weekday paid circulation fall 13 per cent to 179,452 in the six months to March 31, compared with 206,726 in the same period a year earlier.
The numbers, released yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, show the Sun's Saturday circulation fell 10 per cent to 149,445, while the Sunday numbers were also down 10 per cent to 309,264.
Sun publisher Neil Fowler dismissed the impact of the three free papers in the market as a factor. In fact, he said promotional campaigns since the last ABC tally have actually resulted in circulation gains.
The Sun's figures were not included in an ABC circulation report released in early May that covered most of Canada's major dailies, because it had not filed numbers on time. The Sun's numbers, and those from a few other papers across the country, were included in an ABC supplement released yesterday.
Mr. Fowler said in an e-mail yesterday that the paper, which has a very strong Sports section, has been hit hard by the hockey lockout. A severe winter and an increase in the single copy price to 75 cents from 50 cents also didn't help, he said.
Still, Mr. Fowler said the paper's circulation numbers have improved since the ABC reporting period, partly because of an "aggressive promotional campaign." He also said, "We don't believe that we are losing readers at the expense of the free dailies."
However, Doug Checkeris, president of Media Company, a media buyer in Toronto, said the Sun's decline is at least partly a result of the strong competition from the free daily newspapers, The Sun has also gone through a number of redesigns in the past few years, he said, as it tries to figure out how it fits in Toronto's crowded newspaper market.
"They are trying to define their relevance in the marketplace like everybody else," Mr. Checkeris said, but the Sun is particularly vulnerable to the free dailies because of its lack of home delivery on weekdays and its appeal to a similar demographic as the free papers.
Metro and 24 Hours have both built up large circulation bases in the city and some of that audience has come from the Sun, media buyers say. CanWest Global Communications Corp.'s Dose is also distributed in Toronto.
The most recent study of readership -- the total number of people who read individual papers, rather than a measure of the number distributed -- showed significant declines at the Sun, owned by Sun Media Corp. In 2004 the Sun's readership fell 6 per cent to 547,900, according to figures released by Newspaper Audience Databank Inc. (NADbank) in early April.
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21-09-2005 11:31
Beware!
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