Fairfax to insert weekend Domain into Friday AFR editions and drop weekday SMH insert
Fairfax Media is to start inserting the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s Saturday real estate supplement Domain into the Australian Financial Review on a Friday.
The same Domain edition will then continue to be inserted into the weekend editions of The SMH and The Age.
Blamey: Evolution
The move will coincide with a redesign, font update and and move to “brighter” paper stock, Tony Blamey, general manager of real estate for Fairfax Media, told Mumbrella.
It will also lead to the end of the zoned weekday editions of Domain which are put into some editions of the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesdays and Wednesdays covering the Inner West, East and North.
Blamey said: “They will cease publishing in December and they won’t come back in the New Year.” The Age does not carry weekday zoned editions of Domain.
“There is a deadline change for advertisers. We’ve consulted widely amongst advertisers and they are well aware and accepting of that small change in order to get the benefit of getting into the AFR on a Friday.
“The media landscape continues to change. The market evolves. From a reader and advertiser point of view the Saturday Domain section is seen as the marketplace and that continues.”
Asked whether the inclusion of Domain would be a potential circulation booster for the Friday edition of the AFR, Blamey said: “The Domain section is a strong section and we expect it to be well regarded by readers of the AFR as well. Getting the property section in the hands of people on a Friday so they can plan for the weekend is another factor.”
The move comes ahead of Fairfax Media’s plans to move the SMH and The Age to tabloid formats in the first quarter of next year. The end of the weekday editions of Domain in the SMH also removes another barrier to the weekday print edition being dropped for economic reasons – which has been speculated upon as a future possibility for the newspaper.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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