Apparently a media war has just begun in Birmingham.
Last week we received a copy of The Birmingham Press through our door. Until this came through I hadn’t considered the fact that in almost a year of living in Selly Oak we haven’t once had a free paper pushed through our door.
This was the second issue of a paper which has apparently been launched to target the lucrative property advertising sector. With the average Birmingham house price currently £154,459 consider the fact that if an Estate Agent charged just a 1% fee they would receive more than £1,500 – and I’m no expert but it seems the average fee is above a single percentage point.
Apparently, and surprising if entirely true, there are no Birmingham-wide free papers only the paid-for daily Birmingham Mail and weekly paid-for Birmingham Post run by the same company. The owners of these titles launched Birmingham Post Lite as a spoiler a day before the first Press issue.
Incidentally the Press is on sale at 50p (soon to be £1) but is being distributed at irregular intervals to, according to the under construction website, “to up to 25,000 selected, ABC1 homes throughout the area”. Let’s just say I don’t think I live in an ABC1 area.
TheLondonPaper and the spoiler London Lite which together had a combined circulation of over 800,000 copies lasted 3 years before rapidly closing one after another, however The Evening Standard got a new owner and new business model to fill the gap left.
A few interesting articles about the launch/impending war: