Fairfax’s merged TV guide sparks uproar with newsagents
Fairfax’s decision to merge the TV guides of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald into one has met with frustration from the Newsagents Association of NSW and ACT, which has called the move “insulting” and has advised advertisers to avoid the new publication.
From May 8, the 28-page title – called The Guide – will become an optional extra section for The Sun-Herald and Monday Sydney Morning Herald customers. According to Fairfax, a more comprehensive guide will be better able to compete with electronic program guides that offer full program lists.
Andrew Packham, president of the Newsagents Association of NSW and ACT, told Mumbrella that the combined magazine would create “merry hell” for newsagents, which have been asked to share the task of asking customers whether they want The Guide home-delivered on Monday or Sunday.
“This is a huge task for which newsagents are not being fairly compensated,” he said. “From a logistics point of view, it just won’t happen. Fairfax papers are notoriously late anyway. This will make matters worse.”
Newsagents will be paid a handling fee of 15 cents per copy of The Guide which according to Mark Fletcher, who runs the Australian Newsagency Blog, would not cover the costs of the initiative for newsagents.
Packham said that the move had been done without consultation with the Newsagents Association, which he called “insulting and disrespectful.” In his blog, Mark Fletcher also complained that subscribers had been informed before newsagents.
The move could hurt The Sun-Herald’s circulation, Packham added, which he said was “unsaleable without a TV guide”.
The survey of subscribers will take six weeks, during which he recommended advertisers stay away. “If I was an advertiser, I would be thinking twice about advertising, because the upheaval will mean the product may not be delivered at all.”
Packham said he has put calls into Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood, circulation operations director Adam Lamb and The Sydney Morning Herald publisher and editor-in-chief Peter Fray, without a response.
Mumbrella has yet to receive a response from Fairfax.
What do you mean by optional extra? As in, readers will have to pay extra to get the guide? O
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You wont have to pay extra, you just get to choose whether you get it delivered on the Sunday or the Monday.
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First Essential Style folds – now this. If this move is all about Fairfax cost cutting further still (and the new smaller size of The Guide suggests that it is), then the cheapest way for Fairfax to go is to abandon ALL the supplements. Which would make the Sydney Morning Herald much less worth buying. Which would drive sales figures down further still. Which would no doubt result in the SMH managers and editors blaming the internet again, rather than looking at what they have done to what used to be a terrific newspaper.
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Just another way to try and screw the little man. News is notoriously best for it. But why not give it a go Fairfax. As if the newsagent doesn’t work enough hours for next to nothing, you want to add something to their to do list and further hack at their profit margin. Nice.
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Business operations should be about simplicity. This is confusing for newsagents, paperboys and readers.
The person who thought this up should now be an optional extra at Fairfax.
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Being a newsagent for forty years bent over backwards for fairfax with anything they have asked us to do but NOT THIS TIME the person that came up with this idea has no common sence at all
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If the new “Guide” was any more comprehensive or better presented than the old one maybe you could justify all the convoluted delivery choices foisted on newsagents and customers-But it isn’t!
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