Sun-Herald reintroduces TV liftout after reader complaints
Fairfax’s Sunday Sydney paper The Sun-Herald has reintroduced a TV liftout five weeks after dropping a dedicated section as part of a relaunch of the newspaper.
The Sun-Herald also today increased its cover price by 30c to $2.30, a rise of 15%.
The TV liftout now comes within the newspaper’s new Unwind entertainment liftout. The move follows a backlash from readers unhappy about the lack of a dedicated TV guide following the paper’s relaunch.
It marks the fifth strategy for the newspaper’s TV coverage in just under a year.
- Until last April, the Sun Herald had produced one TV guide, and the weekday edition of sister title the Sydney Morning Herald published a seperate guide.
- Fairfax Media then decided to merge the guides and asked newsagents to help them ask every reader whether they preferred to receive The Guide on a Sunday or Monday.
- Newsagents objected, saying the exercise was impractical, and the publisher instead decided to insert The Guide with the Sun-Herald on a Sunday, and make it available on a Monday to readers who did not subscribe to the Sunday paper.
- Last month’s relaunch saw the end of a separate TV liftout, with the creation of the new Unwind section, and The Guide supposedly inserted in the Monday SMH.
- Today saw the creation of the new liftout. The first one was 12 pages, unstapled.
Late last week, the Sun-Herald posted the following message to its Facebook page:
“Thank you to everyone who has sent us feedback on Unwind’s TV guide in The Sun-Herald.
“We appreciate you taking the time and effort to let us know what you think – and we want to reassure you that your suggestions and comments are being taken very seriously. We are going through readers’ responses as we seek to improve the TV guide so it’s a better reading experience.
“If you prefer a stand-alone TV section The Guide is now out every Monday in every copy of The Sydney Morning Herald.
“But we also understand that the television guide is one of the most important parts of The Sun-Herald to our readers.
“We spent months researching the best way to bring useful TV listings to Sun-Herald readers and during that process we spoke to many readers about what they wanted. We received strong feedback that many readers wanted a comprehensive entertainment liftout that included a 7-day television guide. Hence our decision to launch Unwind – the entertainment guide for staying in or going out.
“Please rest assured we are acting on your feedback and that you will see some improvements to make The Sun-Herald’s television guide more reader-friendly from this coming Sunday.
However, there still appear to be issues around newsagents inserting The Guide in the Monday edition of the SMH. One member of Mumbrella’s team who has seven day home delivery has received the Guide only once since the relaunch.
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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So … old fuddy-duddies who like a ‘paper’ guide in the lounge room are expected to jump onto the Sun Herald’s ‘facebook’ page to find out why the ‘paper’ guide has been and gone and then returned again.
Is this ironic?
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I didn”t like the new format the first week but it has grown on me since, but I really don”t like this weeks, I”ll have loose pages all over the place, put the staples back in. Please.
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I haven’t looked back since cancelling my 7 day subscription and starting to use the great iPad app. I feel dirty for not paying, but until they start charging for the app there’s not much I can do about it.
As an added bonus I don’t have to look at their horrendous new redesign! The design was much better 2 years ago IMHO.
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Why do you repeat movies so many times in one week or the week after. I saw one movie advertised in the tv pull out twice in one day, then advertised on another channel in the same week. There must be billions of movies you can choose from instead of so many repeats. Even movies that are on one week, are on the following week. I would like to know how you come about choosing them.
It’s not only the movies, it’s lots of other programs repeated and repeated.
I am glad that formula1 is back, even thou it is only a short version, far to many adds, which cuts out a lot of the race.
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