At both a small five-day daily that probably should be a nondaily, and a six-day daily that could possibly be trimmed, one head-scratcher is what has to be a corporate-mandated two pages of classifieds. (That five-day daily, due to coronavirus, has been forced to triweekly in print, and to do some of these other changes. But what took so long, and the coronavirus prod, corporate?)
At that five-day daily, most the time, you could run all the classys on one page. At the six-day, you could on occasion, and on most days, you'd need no more than 1.5 pages, which means putting one of those CHNI house ads for Mobile tourism or Bama golf courses on the other half.
Next, those house ads. Yes, the average reader may not be fully aware they're house ads, but surely they're not dumb enough to think this is totally like normal advertising. I mean, when you can play all sorts of ritzy golf courses in the Metromess, others in East Texas, or across the river with the Indians at Winstar and other casinos, who the hell from North Texas is booking a trip to a Bammy golf course?
Tighten the classys and kill the house ads and you can run two fewer pages an issue in many cases.
I also don't get them running print TV guide pages any more. NOBODY under the age of 60, and the average newspaper readership, while in its 50s, is still below 60, reads those. Half of people aged 60-70 probably don't. And even a fair amount of true seniors, breaking stereotypes, can find all the entertainment verschnizzle they want on their smartphones.
Yes, there are a few small dailies that still run them, but they do so as parts of entertainment special sections, into which they sell ads. Running teevee pages without ads in today's world of getting advertisers to sponsor everything is laughable, especially at a penny pincher like CNHI.
Even with the pittance rate places like the company in Grand Prairie pay for TV pages paginators, they're not THAT cheap, are they? (Maybe that's a CNHI spinoff?) Plus there's the printing costs of running those extra pages.
Add this all up, and you could make the five-day daily a triweekly.*
* Unfortunately, while it's a triweekly in print, it still has CNHI stupidity. When it trimmed pages 2-3 weeks ago, it cut to one page of classys. It's now running two again, though the April16 issue only needed one. And it's running TV guide pages still. A 12-page paper that could have been eight.
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That said, if you do that, unless you want to piss off a BUNCH of customers, you need to tweak subscription rates.
I have personal familiarity with CNHI not doing this, which is why I've laughed at them scornfully for 20 years.
They bought a five-day where I'd once worked. Cut it to semi-weekly without trying the triweekly route. Refused to adjust subscription rates. Remember, this is 20 years ago. Lots of small papers didn't even have websites.
Refused to adjust subscription rates.
Lotsa people complained. CNHI and local publisher, under corporate directive, mouthed platitudes, did nothing.
Lotsa people cancelled.
So many that CNHI wound up closing the paper. In a town of almost 10,000.
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