Madrid free papers hard to find
More than 10% of the circulation of free newspapers, 4.5 million, is published in Spain. Four national titles with 60 different editions, four free or mostly business papers, more than a dozen local papers, and an airline paper.
Vice prime-minister María Teressa Fernández de la Vega (right) said at the conference on the free press in Madrid (see previous post) that she praised the free press for making younger people read papers.
The four national free papers were present in Madrid and everybody said how great they were doing (I never been to a conference were somebody said he or she was doing a lousy job). All were attracting young and affluent readers, offering quality content and being great for advertisers as well.
The reality is of course a little less rosy. As competition is high on the Spanish market, advertising rates are under pressure which has a negative effect on revenues. One of the presenters even talked about discounts of 85%.
Market leader 20 Minutos made a profit in 2006 but other titles were not so fortunate. The three other national titles are losing money with Metro and Qué! competing for the second position after 20 minutos.
Madrid has four free dailies, but it’s not so easy to find one. Unlike in cities like London, Stockholm, Copenhagen or Amsterdam, at the end of the morning all free papers seemed to have vanished. Either it is efficient cleaning or people taking their copies home or to the office, but around 11.00 they’re gone. There is also surprisingly very little waste of free papers.
On this Tuesday all papers had around 40 percent of advertising. Metro counted 24 pages, 10 with ads; 20 Minutos had 28 pages with 13 pages ads. AND had 32 pages, 12 with ads while Qué! had 24 regular pages, 9 of them filled with ads; the paper also had 4 pages extra on jobs in which is was hard to distinguish between ads and editorial. Qué! also had a editorial page on Disneyland that looked like an ad. All papers had different stories on the front page.
I also picked up a copy of free real estate weekly SV by El Mundo (40 pages) while I bought a copy of the cheapie (50 cents) Publico; 64 pages, only 6 of them with ads. But the paper is only around for a few months.
Carrying or not carrying prostitution ads is a big issue in Spain. Publico makes it clear that they “no admite anuncios de prostutición”. Qué never admitted such ads while 20 minutos stopped running them last year. In this issue of ADN there were no classified ads at all while I could not find them in Metro as well.
At the conference I also learned that two free local dailies disappeared. El Micalet in Valencia, launched in 2003, went to a weekly schedule, while Que Pasa? in Malaga stopped altogether. Vocento, the new owner of Qué! with editions in Valencia and Malaga had stakes in both titles which might explain their fate. A new edition of Qué! in Santander, however, is about to be launched.
Editor in Chief Ana I. Pereda of Qué! pointed out that although more than 50 percent of the total Spanish circulation is free, their share on the advertising market is much less. Paid newspapers have a total share of 24% while free papers take only 2% of the advertising money.
As for reading time, the name of 20 Minutos could be changed into 9 minutos because that was according to one of the speakers the time spend on free dailies; paid papers occupied their readers for 20 minutes.