Daily News Rags Raising Prices

[Mulboyne]

Two Japanese "tabloids", facing declining circulation, are planning to raise their cover prices by ten yen to prop up earnings. Cyzo reports (Japanese) that Nikkan Gendai and Yukan Fuji will now cost 130 yen. Their two main competitors, Naigai Times and Tokyo Sports, are expected to follow suit. You have to think the newspapers have pretty much given up on winning new customers and instead are looking at a way to shore up profits in the near term while they try and work out how to make money out of their web presence. If the price increase does generate additional revenue without damaging sales, the report suggests that weekly magazines like Shukan Post and Shukan Gendai may try to put through a price increase because they are also experiencing declining sales. The situation for magazines has become especially difficult this year with a number of longstanding titles closing down as a result of rising costs and declining readership.

Related FG Threads:
More Time Spent on the Net than Papers
Newspapers Facing A Crunch
20% Price Rise For Japan Times?
Shueisha Halts Production Of Japanese Version of "Playboy"

[gkanai]

Finally, we are seeing the impact of web hitting paper media. Lets see if these publishing companies can move to the web effectively.

[Mulboyne]

Next week, the Asahi will unveil a "hybrid newspaper" which they are calling "Globe".

[Kuang_Grade]

While markets are different in different countries, I think many newspaper publishers are starting to seriously question their previous assumptions about readers price [size=84]elasticity and that they may be more inelastic than they previously thought...or more likely, the readers who were previously very sensitive to price changes have already dropped out the market due to other factors....either by competition from other media or things like free papers like Metro puts out in Europe and in a few places in the US, so the remaining customers (mostly old farts) are alot less senative to price hikes because they really value the product/it is such a ingrained habit that price hikes are not huge issue.
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