Air travelers are the media’s best, albeit transient, market. Next time you fly, take a look around at the sheer number of travelers reading a newspaper. The numbers have to be staggering. And, beside the requisite USA Today, the single copy sales of the local paper at a busy international airport must both send circ directors on a feeding frenzy as well as depress the hell out of them.
I often wonder how circ people forecast sales numbers. I mean, I mostly understand how advertising sets its revenue budgets, as forecasting consumer buying trends (which translates to advertising in the newspaper) is far more straight forward than trending circ single-copy sales.
I liken circ single-copy sales to the local Goodyear Auto Store. Where I live, I know the general manager of the local Goodyear store and have often asked him how his business is and how he forecasts sales.
"Crap shoot," he says wryly. I see his point. Most people visit their local mechanic when something on their vehicle breaks or needs routine maintenance. But, consumers are fickle, and depending upon a bunch of factors, including personal relationships and who has the better coupon special often determines where the vehicle owner has the service performed.
Circ sales, I imagine, are much the same. If there is something particularly juicy in the paper one Sunday, or the local team had a great game the day before, the single-copy numbers probably jump skyward. This is, of course, assuming the production deadline didn’t interfere with getting the late score in the paper.
But on an average Sunday, what is really there to draw buyers into the plunking down $1.50 or more for a newspaper? Is it the coupons? Maybe, but coupons have limited draw and appeal. Is it the expanded coverage? Better choice, but with a dwindling newshole, is there really that much content anymore?
So, it’s a true crap shoot. And airports are even worse the your average consume. I mean, the circ executives and managers have no idea what the average passenger count is going to be on a given Sunday. So, they in turn have no good way to adjust the draw up or down.
Sure, they can trend it out and see what the volume is, but no one wants to have either sold out racks at Hudson’s or have too many returns. It’s a true balancing act.
To better understand this, I turned to the circulation director at a pretty well-known chain on the east coast for some help.
"You know," she said, "we have a bunch of numbers and a bunch of information about how people buy and when they buy – but in the end, it boils down to how bored people are at airports."
Wow, now that’s something. In her opinion, boredom equates to sales.
Talking with her further, she told me that when inclement weather is forecast, her company instructs the local circulation managers to increase the draw by the few hundred papers and take the risk that people are going to get caught off guard at the gate, waiting for their plane and that they either won’t have something good to read or won’t want to start reading their vacation book waiting for the plane.
Instead, she said, the idea is that they’ll buy that local newspaper and read it sitting and waiting. Sure, she said, it’s known that daily bumps in sales won’t return and that the same weather that causes single copy sales to increase frustrates the hell out of the paper’s best customers – its subscribers. That’s because the weather hinders home delivery. But, she waxed, the profit from single copy sales is almost enough to make up for the hacked off customers who didn’t get their paper at 5 a.m. in three feet of snow.
Of all the departments at a newspaper, circ is the one I would least want to work in. Well, circ and finance. Yeah, working in either of these departments seems about as much fun as watching paint dry or having a root canal. But circ employees are almost fanatical about what they do. They love to crunch numbers and, to be honest, get the brunt of a bunch of crap they can’t control.
Perhaps I am just not destined to understand all of what circ does.
Perhaps I am more a production rat than anyone. Perhaps circ is just too disciplined for me.
In any event, I need to find a recycling canister for the Philadelphia Enquirer I bought a few hours ago while I was waiting for a three-hour delayed flight to somewhere I’d rather not go.
So, thanks to the circ department for loading up the newsstands with something local. It was a good read.
I just hope the god-forsaken TurboProp I’m about to board is still airworthy.
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