Weekly newspaper closures in 2011, which revealed that the overwhelming majority of axed titles were frees...
The latest Advertising Association (AA) adspend figures - for the third quarter of 2011 - illustrate the commercial reasons for closures.
Freely distributed papers have suffered far greater adspend declines than paid-for titles. Frees registered a decline in total adspend of 14.9% in the three months from July to September compared to the same period in 2010.
That compares with a drop in adspend for paid-for weeklies of 5.8%. Regional dailies and Sundays fell by 3.4%.
Overall, the regional newspaper adspend was down 8.7% in that quarter. This compared with an 8% fall at national newspapers and an 11.4% fall for magazines.
By contrast, the internet was up 10.5%, TV rose 2.3% and local radio went up by 3.3%.
Despite those declines, the AA is forecasting that regional newspapers will be back in growth by the third quarter next year.
On closures: the Newspaper Society - the trade body for local and regional newspapers - recently did an exercise on the numbers of titles going back five and 10 years.
It reveals that there has been a reduction of 146 titles over the past five years, and of 116 titles over the past 10 years.
According to the research, the totals were 2011: 1167. 2006: 1313.2001: 1283.
Finally, I take on board a couple of comments on my Friday posting: namly, the Lambeth Post being a rebranding rather than a relaunch, and the Sittingbourne News Extra being a replacement for a free title. (And the Gannett typo has been corrected).
Hat tip: Newspaper Society (for providing AA data and historic closu
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