Turkey's Cutthroat Newspaper Competition p. 16

By: Mark Fitzgerald

To survive in the market means offering high-tech reproduction,
highly paid star columnists and incredible gifts to readers sp.

IN NOVEMBER 1992, the Turkish national daily Sabah came up with a modest circulation promotion.
If readers collected coupons from the newspaper every day for a month, they would get the two-volume Turkish edition of the Larousse encyclopedia.
Sabah's two daily national mass-circulation competitors, Hurriyet and Milliyet, immediately countered with offers of their own.
Milliyet offered the Turkish version of Grolier's encyclopedia. Hurriyet offered the 32-volume Turkish version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In a series of house ads, each paper boasted of the superiority of its particular encyclopedia brand.
And each paper began to sweeten its offer ? stuffing the paper with a sample of a cookie, or toothpaste, instant pudding, detergent, soap bars.
As a result of what came to be known as the "encyclopedia war," every fourth household in Turkey now has a complete set of at least one encyclopedia, according to one newspaper executive.
But for the three Istanbul-headquartered newspapers, the promotion war did not stop at encyclopedias. Soon the papers were giving out radios for collecting coupons. Then, color television sets. Then, automobiles.
In one particularly over-the-top promotion, Hurriyet offered the chance to win a villa ? and a car ? for collecting just five days' coupons.
Welcome to newspaper competition in Turkey.
In their effort to carve out a piece of what is essentially a stagnant newspaper pie, Turkey's three national papers pull out all the stops.
Their promotions are among the most expensive in the world. Their quality color would be the envy of many a North American or European newspaper. And their columnists are stars in a way no American journalist has been since the days before World War II.
A top executive at one of the papers, the circulation leader Sabah, gave his perspective on competing in Turkey at the recent international newspaper operations conference sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers Research Association (IFRA).
If Turkish newspaper competition is brutal, the executive, Garbis Kesisoglu suggested, it is because the market itself is a daunting one.
"The average Turkish reader, almost allergic to the idea of reading, would rather watch television," said Kesisoglu, whose title is external relations manager for Sabah.
In a country of 60 million, which grows at an annual rate of 2.5%, combined newspaper circulation nationwide has been stuck at about 3.5 million for the past decade.
And newspapers are an expensive proposition for the average Turk.
"The Turkish paper costs a lot more than its Western counterpart, when one considers the Turkish purchasing power," Kesisoglu said. "For an average reader, buying a daily newspaper at 38? a copy could take as much as 7% of his or her income."
Every year, too, inflation that runs at a rate of 85% further undercuts that buying power.
"On the advertising side, today's advertiser generally is demanding more cooperation, more data from the newspapers," Kesisoglu said. "The cutthroat battle is growing among the 13 private satellite TV channels, hundreds of private radio stations and direct marketing companies."
Sabah, which means "morning," was established only 10 years ago but leads the country with a circulation of about 650,000. As is true of every other Istanbul-based daily, virtually all sales are single-copy.
Of the paper's 48 pages, 16 are full-color ? which in the Turkish market means supersaturated, almost garish, color.
Editorially, Sabah emphasizes politics, gossip and sports.
A recent front page was typical: a story about the breakup of Hollywood fixtures Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford was illustrated by graphic pictures of the actor's alleged other woman, who's chest appeared to be falling out of her blouse.
Sabah has helped bid up the salaries of star columnists by paying them as much as $300,000 annually.
These columnists, too, are recruited from across the range of political spectrum.
"Columnists from the same paper sometimes verbally fight one another in their columns," Kesisoglu said. "Imagine a Turkish version of 'Crossfire' on CNN. Among the top three dailies, there is an air of 'anything goes' in the battle for readers."
The three papers even compete in terms of the decor of their headquarters. All three recently moved to state-of-the-art plants in the Istanbul suburbs.
"Sabah decorated its headquarters with furniture from Italy. Hurriyet's facilities are furnished with German furniture. This was important for image-polishing and prestige," Kesisoglu said.
"The high degree of competition among the Turkish newspapers is pushing them to be innovative in technology," he added.
In addition to its Italian furniture, the new Sabah plant has two 13-unit Goss Headliner HT-70s. It also has five remote printing sites, each equipped with 20 press units and two folders. The newspaper also publishes six other dailies and a dozen magazines, including Turkish versions of Cosmopolitan, Penthouse, Playboy and PC Magazine.
"The huge printing capacity [enables] Sabah's distributors to wait until after midnight to print, making it possible to cover an important soccer game or late-night parliament session," Kesisoglu said.
There may even be some relief coming from the expensive promotion wars, Kesisoglu said.
"Sabah's publisher, Mr. Dinc Bilgin, is now proposing that all newspapers should unite in a gentlemen's agreement not to carry on such promotion campaigns, and do journalistic work only," Kesisoglu said. "We have," he added, "a little more flexibility in Turkey when it comes to gentle-person agreements."