Login / RegisterNewspaper circulation tumbles when Murdoch sells front cover
Vancouver newspapers are sometimes entirely covered in advertising wraps, which replace the front page
The trend started with the commuter papers and eventually spread to the metropolitan dailies.
Now, there's word from England that these cover wraps—when combined with a price rise—can have a profoundly negative impact on circulation.
The Guardian has reported that Rupert Murdoch's flagship tabloid The Sun suffered a loss of 135,000 sales on the first day it tried selling the entire front page to an advertiser.
The 5.3-percent drop in circulation occurred when BSkyB bought a wrap. It came in the same week that Murdoch jacked up the price by 10 pence.
Here in Vancouver, local publishers don't release detailed daily circulation figures, so we'll never know how much damage is caused to advertisers inside the paper when the front page is sold to a big bank like ING, a coffee company like Blenz, or a Crown corporation like B.C. Hydro.
Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.
