Sunday Will Never Be the Same

By: Lucia Moses Publishers fret about circulation declines, but they worry a lot about Sunday. For better or for worse, it's the heart of the product, supplying an estimated 40% of the industry's advertising lifeblood. But circulation volume has been flagging faster on Sunday than on weekdays for several years. And while demographic changes bode ill for papers in general, they may hit Sunday editions especially hard.

Lifestyle changes add to the threat. The maturing of baby boomers has meant a greater portion of Americans working longer workweeks over the past quarter-century, meaning they have to cram more errands and chores into the weekend. There's little time to relax, and more media sources are competing to fill it.

Of particular concern are young readers. Studies by American Opinion Research in Princeton, N.J., found the gap between 18- to 24-year-olds and 55-years and older who read a Sunday paper widened from 7 percentage points in 1990 to 21 in 2002 -- far more than the divide between their weekday reading habits. One explanation: With so many media sources around them, young people feel they can always catch up with the news later, observes Anthony M. Casale, company CEO and former research director for Gannett Co., Inc.

At a Newspaper Association of America readership summit in Orlando last January, Peter Francese, the founder of American Demographics magazine, probably sent a chill up many a spine when he told executives that generational trends don't favor a daily home-delivered newspaper. The fragmentation of consumer markets and decline in time spent at community-building activities undercut newspaper readership. If trends continue, only one in four households will buy a paper by 2007, he warned.

As bad as that might sound, Francese says trends look even worse for Sunday papers. That 55- to 64-year-olds will be the fastest-growing age group in the next four years sounds good because they're also among the biggest spenders on newspapers. But they're also the most likely to own second homes where they will spend many weekends, out of reach of their hometown paper. Meanwhile, the larger 35- to 44-year-old population, the one most likely to have kids and be home on the weekends to read the paper, is on the decline.

Sunday no longer fun day

Most Sunday papers today still are built around the assumption that Sunday remains a day of leisure, says Steve Diller, partner at Cheskin, a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based consultancy. "The only problem is, that Sunday doesn't exist anymore," he says. "People don't use it as a way of whiling away the time, as they used to. They use it as a functional thing."

When the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch surveyed stopped readers in 2000, many people described overwhelmed lives, ranging from students with full-time jobs to new parents and divorced singles with heavier child-care responsibilities. "I think more and more we understand that there really is no time," says Kate Cook, project development manager for the paper, which recently revamped its Sunday edition. "...When they start moving recreational sports for kids to Sunday, then [newspapers] are dead in the water."

The "no time to read" line isn't the whole story, though. A 2000 study by Clark, Martire and Bartolomeo Inc. for the NAA found that while time-poverty was an issue for 34% of people reading less on Sunday, people who are reading more on Sunday seem to have busier lifestyles -- and there was no connection between sense of time pressure and frequency of readership. Similarly, the Readership Institute's 2002 Impact Study found that light readers report 11.7 hours of free time on the weekend, only slightly less than heavy readers' 12.1 hours.

"The no-time-to-read argument was an argument I've heard for 25 years," says Greg Martire, managing partner at the Englewood Cliffs, N.J., marketing and public opinion research firm. "But the Internet blossomed, and they have time for that. It always seemed to me it was a polite way of explaining why people don't read the newspaper. ... What it comes down to is, 'It's not worth my time.'"

Law of diminishing returns

As advertisers have targeted Sunday because of its larger circulation, the papers have ballooned in size and number.

Over the past half-century, the number of Sunday papers has almost doubled. Sunday papers represented 37.1% of total circulation revenue, or $4 billion, in 2001, up from 29.3%, or $1.6 billion, in 1980, according to the NAA.

While the number of editions has continued to grow, circulation and readership have not. The high point was 1993, when 884 Sunday papers had a circulation volume of 62.5 million. Since then, volume has slipped to 59 million, according to NAA figures. New York media investment bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts Sunday circ volume will decline 0.4% through 2007, compounded annually, as weekday volume grows 0.1%.

Readership remains strong on Sunday relative to weekday editions, but it's not what it used to be. While average daily readership plunged to 55.1% of the population in 2000 (down from 72.3% in 1975), average Sunday adult readership stood at 63.7% in 2001 (down from 70.8% in 1975), according to the NAA.

The importance of single-copy sales to Sunday demands more creativity on the part of marketers and may make the paper less valuable to users of preprints, which are predominately a Sunday buy.

Christine D. Urban, president of Urban & Associates Inc., a Sharon, Mass.-based newspaper research and consulting firm, has said that after rising for decades, Sunday circulation is falling to its natural level now that the uniqueness of a super-fat, colorful Sunday paper has diminished.

That may help explain papers' difficulty in raising the price for Sunday. The average price for single-copy and home delivery rose at a slightly slower rate than that of the daily in recent years, according to Veronis' Communications Industry Forecast for 2003-2007. The report predicts the average price will grow 2.4% Sunday, 2% weekday from 2002 to 2007, compounded annually.

Bagging new readers

Some publishers may think they're on the right track by improving service, availability, and news content. It's not uncommon for papers to keep the Sunday on sale throughout the week; about 50 metro papers sell bulldogs, with a few selling them in combination with the Sunday final, appealing to people who want two TV books or coupon packages.

Recently, several papers began testing whether bagging the Sunday paper or its inserts improves the paper's trustworthiness with readers and leads to better positioning near the checkout. The Arizona Republic recorded a 3% lift in sales at a small number of sales outlets where it has been testing bagged Sundays, and plans to sell all its Sunday single-copies in bags by early next year.

"There's a lot of research that shows single-copy customers rarely take the top copy," Circulation Vice President Chris Christian says. "That shows they don't necessarily trust the integrity of the package. This helps make that go away."

For their part, Parade and USA Weekend, whose success depends on the health of Sunday papers, have tried to make their own content more attractive to young readers and offer carrier papers rack cards and other promo materials to push Sunday.

On the subscriber side, a few papers also are looking at home-delivery times, which generally lag weekday delivery by an hour. The Republic began such an inquiry after a stop survey showed, to its surprise, people almost unanimously expected the Sunday to come at the 5:30 a.m. weekday delivery time, instead of an hour later. "I think the industry's fooling themselves to say it's OK to be out later," Christian says.

Is marketing the answer?

Certainly, publishers are right in responding to readers' service, accessibility, and news recommendations, but these schemes aren't the cure-all, observers say. "Price, service, having good overall news -- it's the price of entry," American Opinion Research's Casale says. Publishers must make their product relevant, and promote it at the right price.

"If one can brand [bottled] water and create an appetite for it," says Martire, "certainly a product as rich and diverse as this one can be promoted successfully."

Knight Ridder is leading the way with price cuts. After declaring circulation growth a company-wide goal, Knight Ridder reported increases of 30,000 Sunday copies this year through May in part due to single-copy price cuts in several of its big markets. Chairman and CEO Tony Ridder told analysts at the June Mid-Year Media Review that discounts "clearly are a way of life going forward. I think we will be much more cautious in raising circulation prices."

Others are taking note. Fears that marketers would look dimly on discounts are passe, especially since lower prices seem to attract the younger readers
advertisers covet, says John Murray, vice president of circulation marketing for the NAA. Discounts don't bother Target Corp., which spent $217 million in newspapers last year -- making it the industry's 13th biggest advertising customer among parent companies. "We really just want newspapers to grow Sunday circulation," says Terry Prill, a newspaper strategist for Target.

In trying to meet that demand, however, papers run the risk of advertiser backlash. In July, the Audit Bureau of Circulations board tightened its third-party rules after advertisers balked over supplement-sponsored weekend copies and sponsored Sunday bulldogs delivered to existing subscribers' homes.

Feedback, self-promotion needed

If publishers hesitate to give up revenue by cutting prices, promotion is an even harder sell. Newspapers have never been accused of being good self-promoters; the industry lags other media in advertising spending as a percentage of sales.

A 2001 reader survey by Yankelovich with Harris Interactive for Parade illustrated the problem. The changes readers said they wanted -- a more manageable Sunday paper with more local news and events coverage -- are in place at many of these papers but going unnoticed.

At the Richmond Times-Dispatch, executives saw the power of promotion: After a spring 2000 TV campaign aimed at working women, the number of them who said they read the paper yesterday rose 6 percentage points to 54%. Cook fears that number has fallen off since the campaign ended. "We know if we could have sustained television, we could have grown our numbers," she says. Parade Publisher Randy Siegel says papers are getting better at promoting their changes to non-readers as well as readers, though. "I think they've had a marketing problem," he says. "I think they're doing things to address it. I think it'll pay dividends in years to come."

Publishers have begun to realize they need to look at readers' lifestyles if they want papers to continue to be a part of them. Casale, for one, has been asking more questions about people's routines, how they meet their information needs, and the like.

It's widely recognized that Sunday readers are different than weekday readers and should be marketed to accordingly. Sunday readers are slightly more likely to be employed, female, from bigger households and with higher education levels than weekday readers.

While lifestyle changes seem to bode badly for Sunday papers, the day still holds growth potential. "Americans are very discriminating and judicious about their time," Siegel says. "Look at the deterioration of television news, ... the degradation of radio news. It's a great opportunity for newspapers. ...

"People are going to still be busy," Siegel continues. "But I also think people are more focused on success, in their personal and professional lives. There's an undeniable correlation that people who read good newspapers do better personally and professionally."

Francese freely admits he doesn't know what it will take to turn around Sunday, but suggests papers take a different approach. Instead of just asking readers what they want, papers should ask broader questions -- about their day, their activities, their worries.

"If you produce a paper with information of a compelling nature, people will make time," he says. "Newspapers can exist fine and thrive, but they have to think much more like marketing people and less like newspaper people."

Building a better bulldog

Publishers may not have the answers either, but at least some are starting to think the once unthinkable -- that Sunday may be in need of a radical overhaul.

Diller and Casale say a number of their clients are talking about rethinking the Sunday paper from top to bottom. "There seems to be more of a focus on how readers are changing, as opposed to, 'How can we get more ads?'" Diller says.

Casale predicts, "In the next 18 months to two years, you'll see some fundamental changes in a number of newspapers." Asked to imagine the paper of the future, some envision shorter stories, more news-you-can-use, and stripped down stock tables; maybe papers will even publish different versions for different demographic groups, and instead of just weekend, weekday, and seven-day, subscription packages could be available in any combination of days.

As Christian says, "Consumers may ultimately drive the model the industry ends up with. If we see volumes continue to decline, we're going to have to rethink everything we've become comfortable with on Sunday."

The idea of overhauling a product doesn't come easily in an industry that's more accustomed to making incremental changes, though. "The entire top brass of a company has to be really prepared to deal with it," Diller observes. "This is the core of newspaper profitability in most markets."

In our Aug. 25 issue: Part II, a look at Sunday content in major sections.