Free daily newspapers are busting out all over the province of B.C. First there was CanWest’s announcement of the April launch of Dose, the daily “magazine” aimed at readers in five Canadian cities, including Vancouver. (At an online discussion board, I was reminded that “dose” has two uses as slang — for a hit of LSD and for a case of STD. Oops.)
Friday, the Globe & Mail reported the launch of two tabloid dailies by Black Press in the Okanagan will be followed by another in Kamloops and six more on Vancouver Island by mid-month.
The company plans a March 14 launch of the free daily tabloids, filled with wire copy and local advertising. In addition to Kamloops, they will be published in Victoria, Nanaimo, the Cowichan Valley, the Comox Valley, Campbell River and Parksville-Qualicum, all communities where Black Press already publishes papers — but none of them daily.
According to the Globeadvisor.com report, the eight issues will have the same news content, from Reuters, and local advertising. Breaking local news may be added in the future.
Black Press is owned by David Black, who is no relation to the infamous Conrad. The company owns more than 80 community newspapers throughout B.C., a number of them in the Lower Mainland where they compete against community newspapers owned by CanWest. (Disclosure: I once worked as an editor in the Black chain.)
The article has quotes from Jim Tighe, who heads the Vancouver Island division for Black, and from Black:
‘I hope we’re going to attract people who have moved away from daily papers,” Mr. Tighe said. Nanaimo and Victoria both have daily papers owned by CanWest Global Communications Corp., and the CanWest-owned Vancouver Sun also has readership on Vancouver Island.
The free papers in the Okanagan Valley have been so successful that Black Press decided to start another in Kamloops in the B.C. Interior on the same day as the Vancouver Island papers.
All the Black papers challenge the conventional wisdom that free daily papers can survive only in large cities with a sophisticated mass transit system. If the costs are low enough and the papers can be distributed efficiently where people gather, the concept can work in smaller centres, Mr. Black said.
And then there’s that photo at the top of this post. The Metro box is brand-new; it appeared at a bus stop near my house sometime this morning. I’ve scoured the ‘net looking for information. The Metro web has only information on its Toronto edition. I finally came across this, again at the Globeadvisor.com site:
Dose is entering a crowded market, where there are already a number of weekly entertainment newspapers, and several free dailies. Toronto and Montreal each already have two free daily papers aimed at commuters — Metro and 24 Hours/24 Heures.
One or both of those ventures are expected to start up shortly in Vancouver.
Could that be “soon” as in tomorrow?
TECHNORATI TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, FREE DAILIES, VANCOUVER
Funny how nobody’s made the link yet between Black Press’s freebies and Metro’s Canadian partner, Torstar, which happens to own 25% (or is it 20%? I forget) of Black Press now. Wonder if news from any of the Metro Valley community papers will make its way into Vancouver’s Metro in the same way that CanWest is scooping copy from its Van Net community papers for the Vancouver Sun’s Westcoast News section?