Grabbag distribution
This is me on the picture, biking around Vienna a few months ago and picking up a Sunday newspaper. I’m back in Vienna now at the Worldwide Readership Research Symposium and it’s much colder so I won’t go around in short sleeved shirts anymore.
Newspaper distribution on Sundays, however, is still the same. On Sunday almost every lamppost in Vienna gets a plastic bag with newspapers and with a box to put your money in. The obvious question is of course how many people put something in and how much they pay. No publisher will reveal the income from the Sunday papers but some sources told me that less than 50% is actually paid for and maybe even less. The Sunday circulation, however, is counted as full paid circulation for Sunday papers. This puts the Austrian circulation data in a more realistic perspective.
The Austrians have invented a new word for this sort of bags, they call it Klaubeutel (stealing bag) which is revealing. (I paid for the paper on the picture of course.)
August 8th, 2009 at 10:06 am
[...] put money in box. How many people actually do that is the big secret in Austria (see previous post) but the common name for these bags are Klaubeutel (grab-bag) which indicate that only part of the [...]