State aid for Danish free dailies
Free papers 24timer and metroXpress (both majority owned by Metro International) will next year receive 17.2 million DKK (2.3 million Euro) each in state aid for distribution.
The 17.2m DKK is the maximum a paper can get. Also Børsen, B.T., Berlingske Tidende, Erhvervsbladet, Jyllands-Posten and Politiken get that amount. Kristeligt Dagblad and Information even do get 8m DKK extra.
In the last three months, both papers realized to get below the limit of 50 percent of advertising in their papers, which was needed to apply for state aid. This could be the reason that Metro hasn’t closed down 24timer yet.
Berlingske Media’s free daily Urban was unaware of the fact that they could get the support – and as they didn’t meet the deadline to apply for the financial support, they will not receive any state aid in 2009.
As the aid is only for subscription and/or delivery, both papers apparently showed that they deliver papers to companies which may count as some sort of subscription model. (EPN)
At the bottom of the article is the pdf-file with all subsidies, it seems that even foreign newspapers (USA Today, Frankfurter Algemeine, Die Welt) receive Danish state aid!
(By the way: the metroXpress issue on the left is from last Friday and counted 72 pages!)
January 16th, 2009 at 1:48 am
[...] Except from that, Danish papers are the most expensive in Europe, while there are also many direct subsidies (see previous post). [...]
January 19th, 2009 at 8:59 am
[...] and 24Timer, both owned by Metro International will get a financial support of €4.6m in 2009 (see previous post) and use this to re-establish the subscription network that was cancelled in 2006. In that year the [...]
July 7th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
[...] MetroExpress and 24Timer received distribution aid of €2.3m each (see previous post) for 2009 and Urban will get €1m state support to develop its business (see previous post) paid [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
[...] and 24timer (both majority owned by Metro Interational) recieved €2.3m for distribution (see previous post). Free daily Urban (Berlingske) ‘forgot’ to apply for funds but corrected that later by [...]