Russian billionnaire Alexander Lebedev has announced that the London Evening standard will be given away for free from 12^th October.

Lebedev bought a majority stake in the Standard from Associated Newspapers earlier in the year.  With News International’s free London Paper closing down last month, there will be speculation about the fate of the London Lite.   Despite being owned by Associated and getting much of its content from the same source as the Standard, the Lite competes directly with its ‘sister’ title and has demonstrably taken readers away from the paid for daily.

Lebedev maintains that quality standards will be maintained: “The Standard has been producing exceptional journalism since 1827 and that is not going to change under my ownership”.  He is predicting the circulation will more than double from 250,000 to 600,000 copies a day – higher than the 450,000 circulation the Standard enjoyed before it had to compete with free rivals back at the turn of the millennium.

Lebedev is also predicting other newspapers will go free: “The London Evening Standard is the first leading quality newspaper to go free and I am sure others will follow”.  But doesn’t this move to free media fly in the face of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to charge not only for newspapers but for online content too?

Murdoch’s argument is that people will pay for quality content: “Just make our content better and differentiate it.  If we are successful, we will be followed by all the media.”  This reasoning works for a niche business site such as the Wall Street Journal which has enjoyed an increase in subscriptions by offering unique content to those that value it but will this be the same of commodity news and celebrity gossip?  Critic of the traditional media owners approach Jeff Jarvis argues that commodity news inevitably ends up being free - “if the news is that important, it will find me”.

A recent Harris Interactive poll backs this view up.  Faced with their favourite news site starting to charge, three in four people would find another free site at an alternative.  In the UK there is a long term ‘free’ competitor in the form of the BBC.  Many media owners are concerned that this forces them to offer free content in response.  However as media commentator Matthew Horsman has pointed out, it’s difficult to point to the BBC since exactly the same problem is happening in the States where commercial sites have deliberately chosen to become free in order to compete with one another.

The strange thing about this is that many of us are willing to pay for content for TV – indeed Ofcom figures show that nearly half of all television households in the UK are now choosing to pay for additional TV channels.  We pay for TV primarily because we like the content but we also we like the convenience of paying for something as a bundled subscription, and then consuming what you want, when you want, without worrying about the cost.

With the relaunch and apparent success of SkyPlayer (which allows sky TV content to be viewed over the internet) maybe the solution for the Murdochs is to bundle subscriptions to their key newspaper brands in with the Sky subscripton.  At least it would keep everything in the family.

Deep within the Ofcom (the UK's communications regulatory body) website is a research report on, among other things, the impacts of increasing internet usage on national newspaper consumption.  Across seven countries, consumers are spending less time on 'offline' media since acquiring access to the internet.  

National newspaper consumption has eroded, according to Ofcom.  Of those surveyed in seven countries, 32% are reading national newspapers less now that they had access to the Internet.   France, meanwhile, had almost half (47%) of consumers reading national newspapers less.  Only one country, Italy (14%), had consumers reading national newspapers more now than prior to gaining internet access.  Given the downward spiral in national newspaper subscriptions, it can be assumed that the traditional national newspaper base will further erode, due to the growing traction of the Internet, the increasing fragmentation of the media market, the dissemination of free dailies such as the Metro on an international scale, and the consumer pressures on the wallets, regardless of country.

How does this Ofcom survey help to explain current UK media consumption trends at work, even those within our own research?  To begin, the 27% drop in national newspaper consumption from this Ofcom survey dovetails with our recent Media Trends report on the causal effect of online news growth on offline news here in the UK.  Metrica research found that 66% regularly read print newspapers and 26% read the online equivalent, mirroring the Ofcom findings of 65% and 27%, respectively.  However, Metrica research went a few steps further and determined that three quarters of Metrica respondents read the print and Web versions of newspapers, suggesting the influences of increasing choice, convergence and changing economic conditions for consumers and media. 

What does this mean for the erosion of British newspaper readership? If we take the Ofcom survey of 1,000 UK adults (who use the Internet), and apply that to the current UK Internet population estimate of 39 million users, a 27% drop in national newspaper readership audience would translate to more than 1 million Britons engaging less with newspapers, national, regional and local.  Thus, research from regulators such as Ofcom is limited, in that it does not examine the shared newspaper consumption findings from Metrica's research.  Moreover, Ofcom does not distinguish between national, regional and local newspapers, leaving any stakeholder with PR activities somewhat blinded from a comprehensive view of the current newspaper micro-trends. 

Ofcom reports are limited but do provide an international looking glass... a chance to reflect on our own in-country realities and opportunities as well as context, benchmarks, common themes and comparators in international media markets.   

What do you see within these international findings for your own countries and stakeholders?   What might explain the French rejection of national newspapers at a pace far exceeding other countries surveyed?  I welcome your thoughts.

Source: Ofcom (2008)

A recent Ofcom report argues that social networkers fall into distinct groups.  They include the largely male 'Alpha Socialiser' to the age agnostic 'Followers' who are more peer-influenced.  This neat segmentation of groups falls flat in a host of ways since we know that new media literacy skews towards the younger adults.  And any marketeer will tell you that such simple categories are more complex and consumers cannot be easily ring-fenced.

What I found most interesting in this report is the finding that 22% of adult Internet users aged 16+ have their own online profile.  That tells me that 78% of adults do not, and may help to explain why social media strategies find different levels of acceptance within marketeers, clients and consumers.  Think about it.  If the bosses holding the marketing budgets are not online advocates, not familiar with a widget vs a wicket, and do not recognise a Bebo from an ASBO, then you have an issue gaining legitimacy (and the funds that follow) for viable social media strategies -- especially in a challenging economic climate.

Instead of the obvious -- that 22% of adults have an online profile -- think of the converse.  That 80% of adults do not have a profile despite the fact that Britons spend the most time on social networking sites in Europe.  Regardless of whether you are in Brixton, Bruges or Brasilia, social networking sites have been colonised by early adopters.  The same holds true for your brand.  To get better buy-in on digital media, social networking sites and new PR evaluation tools, take a hard look at those who make the marketing decisions in your outfit.  In which profile do they reside?