'A Short Sharp Read On the Move', Sky News Online

Saturday, February 02, 2008

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Interview: Steve Auckland, Metro and London Lite chief, by James Silver

When London's free evening newspaper turf war erupted at the tail-end of August 2006, commuters reported feeling bombarded by purple fleece-clad merchandisers thrusting copies of London Lite and thelondonpaper at them on their way to the tube.

At 'hot-spots' such as Liverpool Street station and Oxford Circus, members of the public were often forced to run the gauntlet of over-eager rival distributors.

"I will be honest enough to say that in the first few months, the public was flooded with copies of both papers and didn't really know what was going on," admits Steve Auckland, managing director of Associated Newspapers' London Lite and Metro, in an interview with Sky News Online.

"They probably felt embarrassed to refuse a copy without knowing what they were taking. But we - and thelondonpaper - had double the amount of merchandisers out back then and the problem has since reduced dramatically."

Despite such teething problems, there is little doubt that free-sheets have been one of the UK media's great success stories in recent years.

As sales of 'paid-for' titles continue their slow, seemingly inexorable circulation slide, the free newspaper sector has boomed, attracting a young, upmarket and urban readership.

Metro - a concept which was devised in Sweden by the Modern Times Group in the mid-1990s - now has a circulation of getting towards 1.4m across 16 British cities, making it the UK's fourth largest newspaper.

It has also "almost paid back its original investment" and is now making "a good profit".

London Lite, originally conceived as 'Metro PM' three years ago, but became mired in a Competition Commission inquiry, now distributes around 390,000 copies daily between 4-7pm in central London.

Meanwhile, deadly rival thelondonpaper, published by News International, circulates 471,000, according to the latest ABC figures.

The success of the free-sheet sector is down to "a simple formula", explains Auckland, a Yorkshireman who joined Associated six years ago from the regional press.

"It's about the right time of day, the right location [for the merchandiser], the right reader and the right product. If you can get all four right you have a successful business," he says.

"The ease of being able to just pick up a paper and read it on the move is where we score. We are a short, sharp read for the lunch-break or the bus-ride home. Most people just don't have the time to sit down and read their newspaper like they used to, they are out of that habit now, if you like."

But some critics say that giveaway newspapers are cannibalising the readerships of paid-for titles, leading to yet further circulation decline as well as damaging the long-term viability of the industry as a whole.

Fifty-two-year-old Auckland strongly disagrees with that claim.

"I know Rupert Murdoch said initially that he thought Metro had cost The Sun 30,000 copies a while back, but I don't think you can put an actual figure on it," he says.

"If you look back at the charts, say, 20 years ago, newspaper circulation was going down long before Metro came out. We've done quite a bit of analysis of this. The decline is no steeper since Metro, than before it."

He continues: "Statistics in Germany (where there are no daily free newspapers) show that the sales of their titles have decreased in line with the rest of Europe. [Bestselling German tabloid] Bild had a circulation of five million in the 1980s. By 2007, that was down to 3.5m and without a free newspaper in sight."

But when the 'free' business model inevitably means cut-to-the-bone editorial budgets and pages packed with news-wire copy rather than original content, can Auckland appreciate why many hacks remain at best ambivalent towards the 'free-sheet' revolution?

"I can understand their fear about investigative journalism. We don't do undercover reporting. But I think the internet will pick that demand up and the paid-fors will still invest in that as a USP.

"I also think our readers are voting with their feet and saying I don't really need investigative journalism on a day-to-day basis in my newspaper, when I can get it elsewhere."

Auckland is canny enough to concede that there is no evidence that free-sheet readers will one day migrate to paid-for alternatives, as some champions of the giveaways have claimed.

"We're part of the Daily Mail group and there's no evidence to say that Metro readers go on to buy the Daily Mail, even though we promote the Mail in Metro," he says.

So how does this free-sheets boss view the future of paid-for newspapers?

He replies: "I think the paid-for papers will become more specialised, more niche in their respective markets - boutiques, if you like, rather than department stores. They can't be all things to all people as they were in the past.

"But as to how their circulations will go, I would say it will remain a tough exercise for them."

:: You can read more articles by James Silver at www.jamessilver.net

Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, February 02, 2008

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