Calkins At Home In Philly 'Burbs

By: Lucia Moses Philadelphia may be losing people, but to its north, Bucks County is booming. As neighboring counties fill up, commercial real-estate development is thriving, thanks to the county's strategic proximity to major roads and the high-tech corridor between Princeton, N.J., and Washington.

Residential growth also has taken off, fueled in part by New York transplants who have discovered they can stretch their housing dollar further in Bucks, giving rise to "McMansions." While Philadelphia lost 10% of its population from 1990 to 1999, Bucks gained 14.2%.

All this is potentially good for Calkins Newspapers, based in Levittown, Pa. With its three dailies in Bucks County and neighboring Burlington County, N.J. -- also growing, although to a lesser extent -- it boasts the second-largest daily readership in Greater Philadelphia after Knight Ridder's Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., according to Scarborough Research.

The trick for Calkins has been to get advertisers to notice the desirable demographics of its readership, since media buyers may lump its market into Greater Philadelphia. Lisa A. Szal, director of advertising and marketing, said stressing those demographics has been a cornerstone of Calkins' ad sales presentations.

"It's very easy and efficient to think of the Philadelphia DMA [designated market area] as one," Szal said. "We have to break ourselves out, because we're trending in the opposite direction as Philadelphia." If they don't make that distinction, she said, "We would go down with the sinking ship."

This approach paid off a few years ago, when Calkins convinced a department store to extend its buy from one to all three papers: the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown; The Intelligencer Record in Doylestown, Pa.; and the Burlington County Times in Willingboro, N.J. After cash registers started ringing, the store added the papers to its permanent ad schedule.

Now the goal is to copy that success with other big retailers. Calkins is off to a good start. Ad spending by major retailers popped this summer after the company centralized its ad sales staff, while the reorganization freed more staffers to go after local business.

Szal is shooting for 6% revenue growth in major retail this year, above overall newspaper industry projections. She conceded that, because of the slow economy, the payoff might not be as dramatic as she had hoped. Still, she said, the market's growth provides plenty of ad sales opportunities. "It's kind of like our 15 minutes of fame."