MEDIA MARKET DATA - World Association of Newspapers

trend. In 2006, despite editorial changes and new promotional activities, copy sales declinedfurther. The Management Board concluded that the reversal of the negative trend andreaching the target copy sales levels was not possible and hence further expendituresconnected with the continued publication of the daily were not in the interest of the companyand its shareholders. http://www.agora.pl/agora_eng/1,66652,3176726.html; February 21,2006South AfricaThe publication of Nova, the four-and-a-half-month-old daily newspaper from the Media24stable based in Johannesburg, is to be suspended, a statement from Red Ink Publishing onbehalf of Nova said. Nova was aimed at young, high-income urban professionals. Althoughpositive comments were received on its editorial content, sales figures were not up toexpectations. Its publisher, Deon du Plessis, said: " In terms of content and style, the paperwas well received; it was seen as innovative. Research showed that most people in the targetmarket enjoyed it when they got it. Some advertisers were beginning to value the paper. Butcirculation remained flat. "As to distribution, we had not yet succeeded in reaching sufficientnumbers of people in the niche. Converting our target market of high-income non-newspaperreadingmetro people to a regular newspaper-reading habit proved difficult." Staff members ofNova (in circulation, advertising, administration or editorial departments) will be affected, butmost will be placed elsewhere in the group, the statement said. "We want to make a specialgesture towards those subscribers and advertisers who joined us in this experiment. To showhow much we valued their custom, we will refund their full contributions," said Du Plessis.In an interview with the Mail & Guardian Online in September last year, Nova editor MinetteFerreira said: "[Nova will survive because] the launch of Nova is very much part of Media24'swhole strategy of exploring newspaper readers. If you look at, for instance, the launch ofDaily Sun and the launch of Die Son, they went for a market that was not previously readingnewspapers, and both of them are now amazingly successful. Ferreira said Nova would be"really happy if we start with doing 40 000 to 50 000 [copies] in the first few months"."Nova is an integral part of that whole strategy of Media24. This means that we've got the fullsupport of Media24 and they are [our] financial back-up. What comes with Media24 are aninfrastructure and the knowledge of years and years and years of experience in the newspapermarket. They have got the distribution channels and the printing capabilities, all of that," shesaid. "It is a mixture of us and the ideas that we got [with] the back-up that we get fromMedia24. It's a recipe for success.http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/&articleid=263708; February 8, 2006TaiwanThe Chinese-language Central Daily News (CDN) will temporarily suspend publishingstarting on June 1 after its owner, the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), decided to stopinjecting new funds into the financially-bleeding paper. The CDN, founded in China almost80 years ago, was once Taiwan's most influential and largest newspaper by readership. Butthe daily paper has become deficit-ridden in recent years due to growing competition fromother print media and cable TV news for advertisers. KMT Deputy Secretary-General ChangCho-shen explained yesterday that the newspaper is to fold temporarily and that the KMT isseeking a buyer in the hope that the veteran Chinese-language daily will continue to exist in adigital form on the Internet. Chang revealed at KMT headquarters that the newspaper hasbeen operating at an average monthly deficit of around NT$9 million (US$281,000) for a longtime, while carrying millions of dollars worth of debt. Since the KMT is also beset withfinancial difficulties, the party can no longer sustain the paper's heavy financial losses. The18