BRITISH PRINT MEDIA STRUGGLES FOR SURVIVAL AS READERS AND SALES DECLINE, DIGITAL THRIVES
By SHAMLAL PURI IN LONDON
Associate Publisher & Senior Editor – UK
Worth Noting:
- All major national newspapers were based here, such as the Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, the Observer, and the global news agency Reuters and scores of business-to-business magazines.
- Being in this hub was a mark of prestige and being included in the country’s unique and top media outlets. The national media based there got the label of Fleet Street Papers which though the actual street is no longer there, the word Fleet Street Papers still exists among veterans to describe the British national newspapers.
- It won’t be long before Fleet Street, as the heartbeat of the British newspaper industry, will be consigned to the dustbin of time by younger journalists.
Declining readerships and deteriorating advertising revenues are throttling Britain’s once-thriving newspaper industry, forcing owners to cut costs by closing, selling their publishing outfits or turning to digitalise their papers.
Most UK newspapers – both national and regional titles are going through a significant crisis forcing some publishers to pulldown shutters on their titles.
In contrast, others struggle hard to keep their heads above the water, while others plan to sell up and call it a day.
Once upon a time, the hub of the newspaper industry was Fleet Street in central London. It boasted the world’s top and high-circulation newspapers.
This was the place which saw the rise of daily and Sunday papers full of serious news, sex, sport and sensationalism – the popular press or the gutter press.
All major national newspapers were based here, such as the Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, the Observer, and the global news agency Reuters and scores of business-to-business magazines.
Being in this hub was a mark of prestige and being included in the country’s unique and top media outlets. The national media based there got the label of Fleet Street Papers which though the actual street is no longer there, the word Fleet Street Papers still exists among veterans to describe the British national newspapers.
It won’t be long before Fleet Street, as the heartbeat of the British newspaper industry, will be consigned to the dustbin of time by younger journalists.
The first publisher to quit Fleet Street was Rupert Murdoch when on the 24th of January, 1986, he made 6,000 workers redundant by moving production for his media News International conglomerate, which produced papers such as The Times and The Sun, from Bouverie Street adjacent to Fleet Street to a new plant in Wapping, east London.
He wanted to avoid bargaining with the powerful print unions that could bleed newspapers to death with their industrial actions.
This was followed by an exodus of newspapers when the top publishers fighting to cut costs, such as exorbitant rents and belligerent unions, started leaving, killing the once-famed media hub.
Most publishers scattered to West London, South London, North London or within a few square miles of the revered Fleet Street.
The Telegraph left its posh headquarters in Peterborough Court on 135-141 Fleet Street, moving to Victoria.
The Guardian and The Observer are in the most northern area of London by the Regents Canal, as is the Associated Press, in the middle of Camden suburb in London.
Reach, formerly Trinity Mirror, publishers of tabloid and global news agency Reuters in Canada Square across the River Thames, were the last publishers to move out of Fleet Street.
Their joint aim was to cut running costs and avoid bullying print unions.
The only publisher left in Fleet Street today is DC Thompson, headquartered in Dundee, Scotland. The building, emblazoned with Scottish newspaper titles, remains an excellent monument to the once famed media hub even though no journalists work there.
Today Fleet Street has officers of lawyers, accountants, Snappy Snaps photos processors/studio, a small number of restaurants, including the famed El Vino pub, the watering hole of many celebrity journalists who met there for a pint during lunch and after work.
St Bride’s Church for the journalists still exists there, but it has lost its congregation of faithful Christian news hounds who dropped in for prayers taking a break from the newsrooms.
UK Media experts paint a grim picture of the future of printed newspapers, pointing to growing tensions in the industry, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022 and its aftermath spelt the death knell for printed newspapers.
The two lockdowns added to business failures, job losses, a cost of living crisis, and even hunger, significantly affecting people’s purchasing powers. They were forced to reconsider buying unnecessary luxuries such as newspapers when paying heavy energy costs and spiralling food bills.
Fewer households purchase print news publications, and newspaper expenditure fell from over £9.9 billion British pounds in 2005 to slightly over £3 billion in 2021.
This crisis would become even more damaging with a 40% predicted rise in water bills.
Undoubtedly, the newspaper industry in the United Kingdom has struggled over the last few decades, constantly fighting for survival.
National newspaper circulation in the UK has been declining for years, even among leading brands like The Daily Mail, and six nationals saw a year-over-year drop in circulation of more than 20 per cent between 2021 and 2022. The circulation of leading regional daily newspapers also dropped year-on-year, and in the first half of 2022, only two such publications reported a circulation of over 25,000,
One of the UK’s top-selling newspapers, The Daily Telegraph, has gone into administration and was put on sale by its billionaire owners, the Barclay Brothers, because of heavy debts and bank loans, the authoritative media magazine UK Press Gazette reported.
The company is run by one of Barclays’ business empire subsidiaries, the Telegraph Media Group (TMG), through a complex set up of offshore companies owned by Press Acquisitions Group, which has been valued as of January 2022 at £184.3 million and its sister company, The Spectator magazine at £16.7 million worth of assets less its debts.
This sale is because the Barclays empire has borrowed heavily from banks for their operations. The receivers are targeting £600 million for the titles.
Others value the company at around £500 million.
Though the main reason for the sale is the myriad of financial problems of the owners, the Barclay family’s huge multimillion Pound business empire is less connected directly to the Telegraph titles.
Observers would put it this way – when the main holding company’s financial problems catch a cold, the Telegraph outfit can be heard sneezing.
According to the UKPG, the Telegraph’s stable newspaper sales dipped during this period like other newspapers.
Over the years, The Telegraph, founded in 1855, declined to declare its circulation to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) in 2019 in a joint decision by several leading newspapers.
But the historical final 2019 declaration showed ABC sales of Daily Telegraph at 317,817 (363,183 in 2018) and 248,288 of the Sunday Telegraph each issue.
In July 2010, the circulation of the Sunday Telegraph was 505,214 (ABC), which slid down by some 49% to 248,288 nine years later.
Its nearest competitor, The Times, sold 417,298 copies in 2019 and Sunday Times 712,291.
This throws into light the dwindling sales over the years.
The drastic slide in sales of this newspaper which stood at 1.4 million in 1980 – is a testimony to the change in people’s reading habits. The drop was so dire that it withdrew from declaring its circulation figures to the ABC.
The award-winning newspaper, known as the right-wing supporter of the Conservative Party, has had several scoops which have shaken the establishment at the time.
The Telegraph management is buoyant over the company’s future and financial stability because of higher advertising revenue and digital platform media successes.
The company has enjoyed revenue of £168.9 million in sales and advertising.
Not all publishers have been lucky to have had that level of success in these challenging times.
There have been other recent newspaper sales which add context.
Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere took on The Mail’s parent company DMGT which went private in 2021 in a deal that valued the paper at £850m, including debt, reported the UKPG.
Previously, DMGT had bought the I in November 2019 for £49.6m and the New Scientist in March 2021 for £70m.
In early 2018, Trinity Mirror – now named Reach – bought the Daily Express and Daily Star and their Sunday sister papers for £200m.
Johnston Press sold its titles for £10.2 million. The Scotsman, the national championship of Scotland, was the only national daily unit in that group.
The FT Group was sold to the Japanese Nikkei Group for £844 million in 2015.
Potentially The Telegraph titles could be bought by foreign buyers in the Middle East, Europe, or the UK, depending on the highest bidder.
At the time of writing, the DMGT Group was reportedly at the forefront of bidding to be the next owner of The Telegraph. Still, its acquisition could be scrutinised to curtail any market monopoly breach of rules.
While the titles struggle for new buyers, there are hardly any good tidings for the newspaper owners.
They struggle to beef up their sales and increase subscriptions to their digital papers.
Publishers are struggling with escalating costs and dipping circulations.
For example, the rising cost of paper and ink, increasing wage demands from the staff and delivery costs add to the publishers’ woes. Consequently, they are forced to raise cover prices for their newspapers which many readers cannot afford.
This is a well-known formula in publishing: Broadly speaking, cover prices and sales of the paper pay for the production costs, and advertising revenue adds to the publishers’ profits.
Any returns of unsold copies bite into publishers’ profits from advertising revenue.
In 2023, according to figures compiled by the UKPG, UK’s top circulation newspaper is The Metro, the free newspaper available at main points such as railway stations, on buses, and other significant places with a footfall, such as malls, and sent online to regular readers.
This paper is read in London, and regional editions are printed in major UK cities. Its circulation is 956,317.
The Daily Mail sells 780,779; Mail on Sunday 652,385; Daily Mirror 277,346′ Sunday Mirror 203,065; Daily Express 158,282; Sunday Express 150,987.
The I Paper 132,242; Financial Times 109,637; Daily Star 86,575; Sunday People 69,990; Daily Record 60,857, City AM 67,569 and Sunday Post 42,197.
One cannot forget The Sun, famed for its titillating news and Page 3 topless Girl, sold 2.069 million copies daily in March 2014. By March 2020, its circulation went down to 1,250.632 (ABC) daily, and Sun on Sunday, 1,013,777 copies– still significant compared to others lagging seriously behind,
After 2019 The Sun stopped sharing its circulation figures with the ABC.
The sales dip at the tail end of this list shows the changing times and people’s reading habits.
In the past, there have been accusations that those declaring their circulations could be declaring their print run rather than sales. That’s an arguable question.
The average total circulation of all national newspapers currently is estimated at 3,845,861.
What happens to unsold papers – many would ask.
Newsagents, where the public stops to buy their daily newspapers, receive more copies than needed to avoid customers purchasing rival papers.
These retail outlets selling newspapers and magazines operate a sale or return policy. This means that anything they do not sell will be returned to them by their newsagent.
The same van that drops off the stock daily also picks up unsold copies from the previous day. They are taken back. The wholesale supplier then has the same arrangement as the newspaper publisher. They are returned for recycling.
The financial accounts are adjusted accordingly, and at the end of the day, the publisher shoulders the burden of unsold copies, not the wholesales or retailers.
Are printed newspapers still relevant?
The pertinence of printed papers has been gradually declining since the 1950s with the appearance of TV. Today, with the staggering prominence of computerised media, the downfall of printed news might appear inescapable, pessimists say.
Positive minds are divided: Changes may be made, but printed papers are significant in the media scene.
One significant advantage of newspapers is that they can be one source of detailed information, compared to internet readership, which refers to comprehensive articles.
Additionally, newspapers can be stored if well-looked after. I have copies of newspapers with my published articles going back 50 years.
Instead of searching multiple websites for information, newspaper readers can have all of the day’s news at their fingertips and read to their heart’s content.
Doomsday pundits say the internet is gradually killing the print media. People are now used to receiving news as they happen, which print media cannot deliver, not even the evening newspapers. They have to adhere to their print schedules.
The internet is taking over. The younger generation prefers to surf the news and check job vacancies online rather than wait for the printed media to publish the next day.
Plainly speaking, the internet is killing the print media. This is the day of digital media. This is already happening with leading national newspapers turned into e-papers.
Due to the digital newspaper, readers can search for the latest jobs available in the industry. Besides, they use the job requirements and search them online to ensure they get the job position. Nowadays, it has become much more accessible than ever to access many DIY articles and use them in their daily lives.
Across the Atlantic Ocean in the USA, with 7.5 million subscriptions, The New York Times (NYT) takes the top spot. 2020 was a solid year for the outlet—by Q3 2020, the NYT had generated the same revenue from digital subscriptions as it had for 2019.
The real big money lies in digital media or Paywall subscriptions, but that’s only the forte of household name titles.
In the United Kingdom, too, the Financial Times has 1.1 million online subscribers globally; The Guardian 790,000; The Economist magazine 519,000.
The writing is clearly on the wall that the days of the printed media are numbered unless there is a miracle – a change in reading people’s habits reverting to printed newspapers in yester years.
One ray of hope for the resuscitation of the printed media is Hackers. Suppose the cancer of hackers invading the privacy of computer owners and stealing their personal information puts off the new computer-savvy generation, and they turn off their gizmos. In that case, they may revert to reading printed newspapers.
That’s a shot in the dark, or is it just wishful thinking?
