The South Florida Sun-Sentinelnow features the Houston Chronicle’s wildly popular SciGuy Blog, a science blog by Eric Berger. This collaboration has the possibility to increase readership for both the Chronicle and the Sun-Sentinel, which serves Palm Beach, Boca, Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach.
If including the SciGuy blog helps increase readership for the Sun-Sentinel, a similar move at other news organizations could help increase the readership of other newspapers.
The Chronicle also has a new service in which subscribers can subscribe to the paper Wednesday through Sunday or Thursday, Friday and Sunday with the remaining days as online service. The Chronicle may be preparing to charge for its online service but, if nothing else, this will increase readership and revenue. Perhaps this is what the Chronicle is studying.
The thinking seems to be that seven-day subscribers are a niche audience. Not everyone needs or uses the news and, in such a busy culture, most people don’t have time to sit down and leisurely read the paper every day. They prefer to read the paper only when it’s convenient.
Advertisers tend to gravitate toward the papers that come out later in the week, especially Sunday.
Similarly, the Daily Cougar’s readership is higher on some days than others. Attempting to fill space while saving the important stories for days with the highest readership is tricky. By expanding their audience, these papers may have figured out a balance.
The Chronicle doesn’t plan to stop publishing on its slower days. Instead, it will probably raise its price for seven-day subscriptions and lower it for partial-week subscriptions.
The Chronicle remains a mass product on Sunday and during the midweek. On Monday and Tuesday, readership is low.
The Daily Cougar and other publications should watch this closely. The Chronicle might be on to something.
