News Corp Australia increases the cover prices of Sunday tabloids
Australia’s largest newspaper publisher News Corp is to increase the prices of its Sunday titles a week after Fairfax did the same for its Sydney flagship.
News Corp Australia, formerly News Limited, will increase the cover price of most of its Sunday tabloid newspapers by 50 cents from Sunday July 21.
The Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Herald Sun, The Sunday Mail (Queensland), Sunday Mail (South Australia) will all increase by 25 per cent, while the The Sunday Tasmanian will increase by 20 cents, a 10 per cent increase.
The announcement comes days after Fairfax lifted the cover price of city copies of the NSW-based Sun Herald to $2.50 last Sunday. Fairfax’s Melbourne title The Sunday Age has been $2.50 for the last year.
“From July 21, the cover price of News metropolitan Sunday newspapers in NSW, VIC, QLD and SA will be $2.50. This brings them in line with The Sunday Times in Perth which experienced an increase earlier this year,” said a News Corp Australia spokeswoman.
“At News, we aim to continue creating commercially sustainable models for quality journalism.”
The moves come as Australia’s publishers attempt to put their titles on a firmer financial footing.
Whereas a high circulation number had been an important part of the advertising sales story, the decline in print ads means that consumers are increasingly being asked to pay a price which is no longer loss leading.
The price rise has also caused comment among newsagents with Australian Newsagency blog’s Mark Fletcher writing: “I think we are approaching a tipping point, a price point beyond which customers will not pay for a print newspaper.”
Nic Christensen
A 25% increase. I wonder what News Ltd would say if its employees demanded a 25% pay increase? I’m a newspaper (and on-line) reader, but Mark Fletcher is right – the tipping point for me is rapidly approaching.
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“Approaching a tipping point”….Seriously guys, look in your review mirror, you drove past it about 2 years ago…
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Was this part of their transformation plan for the business.
Strip costs, namely cull all the experience, then create a proposed customer facing proposition. What a great Idea….let’s hike up prices by 25%.
That should work well?
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C’mon guys dont’ let me down … where’s “ex reader”?
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$2.50 is not a lot to pay for a quality newspaper. In fact I would be happy to pay twice that for a good product. The real question is what is a reasonable price to pay for the Sunday newspapers on offer. News Corp and Fairfax are about to find out. I would suggest $2.50 is a bit over priced.
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what about perth?
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What the hell is a news-paper??? Some new app?
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“Quality journalism” – haha! Although the Sunday Tele does seem to be slightly better quality than the Monday-Friday Tele and also less annoyingly rabid.
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@DigitalGuy: Really? While I’d hardly call the Weekday (and perhaps the Saturday paper too) editions of The Daily Telegraph the highest standard of journalism, it’s of a somewhat higher standard than The Sunday Telegraph which contains more filler than news stories from what I’ve read. That’s just my opinion though.
As for the price rise, 25% increase on all the metropolitan Sunday papers is a bit too much but $2.20 for The Sunday Tasmanian (which the metro papers should’ve had IMO) sounds reasonable.
Having said that, a price rise probably should’ve been held off until at least the end of the year IMO. Afterall, it wasn’t really all that long ago that The Daily Telegraph finally increased the price to $1.20 after about a decade of stability at a dollar.
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A 25% price rise for reflects attempts to accelerate switch to online. Not great for newsagents. Great for Flipboard, Flud News, Pulse News, Fluent News, News Loop and every other free news app that lets me curate the news that I want in the format that I want from the quality sources that I want.
Fairfax and News Corp have little to no proprietary content of note. Certainly none that warrants warrants climbing over a pay-wall. Raising prices on highly commoditised content whilst new technology offers a superior (and free) experience will have its challenges.
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Why is it so hard to have my say, being around the garden path to even find this!!!!! I want to know why the TV shows never run to time, I have to go to work (as a midwife) and really wanted a bit of fun in my life with Hamish and Andy, which according to the mag starts at 8 pm, WRONG, still waiting and now have to go to work, sorry but this isn’t the first time, do you not have a clock????please explain
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A 25% Increase? The Sunday Mail QLD is not worth $2.50! Yes the tipping point has well and truly come. The final nail in the coffin for the Sunday Mail.
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