Today, as full and complete UK election results were only available after the closing time of the morning edition, a special afternoon issue was published, called City P.M. (click for bigger picture)

The paper makes no secret of its point of view when it calls a lib-lab coalition ‘terrible’.

The special issue was sponsored by IG Index – a spread betting provider – who is the only advertiser in the P.M. edition.

City AM will also be available for passengers on British Airways business flight from London City Airport. (The Guardian)

Circulation of City AM in January was 88,000; average circulation in 2009 was 98,000.

Interactive Investor will manage and provide content for City AM’s website, which will be relaunched soon. The content will also be available through iii.co.uk.

Both companies will also launch the City Awards 2010, to be sponsored by Saxo Bank. (The Guardian)

Celebrities like prime minister Gordon Brown, London mayor Boris Johnson and Virgin-CEO Richard Branson congratulated the paper with no. 1000.

In a special section the history is told and the successes (scoops, readership) of the paper are featured as well. (Not mentioned are the shelved plans for expansion in the UK and beyond – see my own history below.)

Lawson Muncaster, ex-Metro International’s vice president for global sales, launched City AM in September 2005. The paper was distributed in the London city centre (square mile). Munchaster raised £10m for the operation. Biggest investor was Boudewijn Poelmann’s Blue Bull, Poelmann was chairman of the Dutch lottery and co-founder of Independent Media, the company behind the Moscow Times, a free paper launched in 1992, now published by Sanoma.

City AM was thinking about new editions for Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham in March 2006, later autumn 2007 and 2008 were mentioned for new launches. The paper also wanted to expand to Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokio and New York. Paris and perhaps Amsterdam could follow later. In London circulation increased from 70,000 at the start to 100,000 now.

From October 2007 to March 2008, City A.M. made a profit of £47,000 before tax (€60,000). The revenues were £3.5m in that period. In 2008, however, the publisher made a loss of £754,000. City AM had journalists edit their own copy, resulting in six subeditors losing their job in 2008. Also two sales people were let off.

The e-paper version of City AM is not really state-of-the-art. Navigation is difficult, online reading pretty hard. There is also no archive nor pdf download.

The paper made a loss of £1.8m in the 12 months to the end of December 2007, although it is now close  to break-even according to Thorpe. Total accumulated loss since the paper launched in 2005 is £7m.

There were plans to launch the free daily at least in Manchester and Edinburgh in the spring of this year (see previous post).

In London circulation will be increased to 150,000 in the next years. In 2010/2011 the paper will therefor double its circulation from 104,000 now to 200,000.

Managing director Lawson Munchaster spoke at the 1st Free Paper Conference in Madrid today.

City AM celebrated its 3rd birthday on the 5th of September. In three years the paper reached beak-even and saw its readership in crease to 233,000 in Q2 2008, moving up from 100,000 at launch and 170,00 in 2007.

City AM  targets a niche market of affluent readers, a major part working in the very limited area of the London City. One of the problems was the low reading time because the paper was handed out at the entrances of the subway station in the London City center, so readers could not read it on their journey. City AM adopted therefore a new distribution method whereby also readers in specific areas in London could pick up their copy before they entered the subway.

Since then, average reading time went up from 11 to 18 minutes. The new distribution method is ’self selective’ according to Munchaster: “people who are not interested in business simply don’t pick up the paper.”

City AM saw advertisng go up with 38% from January to August 2008, although the UK advertisng market in total saw a drop of more than 10%, growth is mostly in ‘local businesses’ according to Munchaster, although these consist of international brands as well, as these are all ‘local’ in the London city square mile.

City A.M. plans to increase its distribution from 100,000 to 150,000 and is also thinking of launching in other cities in the autumn. In London distribution will expand to railway stations in southwest London such as Richmond. (Press Gazette)

Users take a picture of special codes – like the one on the right (from Wikipedia) – which then directs the phone to a special City AM website or any other Internet page.

Software has to be downloaded to the phone to make it work. As there are so many different phones around, this might be the major barrier for users. In Japan the codes are extensively used. (Brand Republic)