Weekday editions of SMH and Age may ditch broadsheet format
Switching the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to a tabloid or midsize format are back on the agenda under Fairfax Media’s new management, Mumbrella can reveal
Although no decision has been made, Jack Matthews, CEO of the company’s metro division, told Mumbrella that he would be surprised if the Monday to Friday editions of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age remained in broadsheet format.
Asked in a video interview with Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes about whether there would be a change, Matthews said: “Possibly. Certainly we’ve had a fair amount of feedback, for a long time I suspect, that the big broadsheet is not a convenient way to consume news.”
http://youtu.be/sIEssxvSJmM
I think they should move from the broadsheet format as it’s a real pain to read at the brekkie table, waiting room, public transport etc.
I hope The Australian goes the same way as well.
Why not go tabloid in size? The content already is.
Here’s the scoop. They guy selling susbcriptions to The Age in suburban Melbourne a week ago told me that they were moving to a new format “very soon” and he even showed me a diagram of the proposed tabloid version. Given he was selling a six month subscription I assumed that was the timeframe. Wrong message or market research?
Once again the idiocy of the Hilmer years is shown up – the guy builds a brand new printing press at Tullamarine, but refuses to make it able to print the Berliner format (even though the editor at the time, Michael Gawenda, argued strong for it)
They should have gone to a tabloid years ago – there’s no need for market research. The fact that’s London’s Times starting printing both sizes, then rapidly scrapped the broadsheet because no one was buying it any more, should be all the information they need.
I’ve worked for jack for 5 years, he’s a game changer.
Half your luck Mac. I worked in the Whish-Wilson / Robert Whitehead era… crunch the numbers, do the math
i’m going to cancel subscription and go straight to ipad app – its great
Bring it on. I detest having to do the paper shuffle on the bus in the morning. Bravo.
I really like Jack but he is the only one who floats in a cesspool of mediocrity – Smaller format pages work OK if you can hold your nerve with full and half page advertisers and I doubt they can (a page is a page) – but more importnntly the savings they really need mean tackling the big days – Saturday is the bigest, and all that classified small space stuff will spill onto more pages and the savings won’t be there – they have bee talking about it for over five years – guess they still will be in five more. I still like Jack.