It's getting tight for free titles

 
Street survey Shortly before the launch of the fifth free title News, Werbewoche asked the golden media triangle about free reading habits. 
Almost everyone likes 20 Minuten, Cash daily is unknown, .ch is spurned despite home delivery and is now loved by young women. This is the result of a non-representative Werbewoche street survey of a total of 171 people in the cities of Basel, Bern and Zurich.On December 5, the free daily News, the fifth national free paper in German-speaking Switzerland, will appear in the agglomerations of the golden triangle. Given the abundance of commuter newspapers, one wonders how many and which titles will survive. Not to mention the free newspapers that also exist in Basel, Bern and Zurich. The situation is also difficult to assess because no meaningful reach figures exist yet for .ch and only halfway meaningful ones for Cash daily.
For this reason, Werbewoche wanted to find out before the launch of News, by means of a street survey, how popular the currently existing old and new free titles are. Although not representative (see Methodology), the survey with a total of 171 interviews in Basel, Bern and Zurich should nevertheless tell us something about the current market situation.
What is perhaps most surprising from the results is that Cash daily is not only the least read free title. It is also largely unknown. Many respondents openly admitted that they had never heard of it. Still others knew the Ringier title, but did not know where it was available. In any case, of the 171 respondents, only six men and three women counted themselves as occasional Cash Daily readers - because no one had looked at the business paper two days in a row. The situation is quite different with 20 Minuten: 114 people said they had read the Tamedia paper, 45 of them even on two days in a row. The title is most popular with the young target group, both women and men. But the over-55s also like to get the paper out of the box - if it is still available at all, as some noted.
With 43 mentions, .ch, which is only two months old, achieved a respectable success. But only ten people said they had picked it up on two days in a row, which is actually surprising in view of the home delivery. And no other free title received as many wrinkled noses and snide comments ("I don't know what this title is about") as .ch.
But even when the talk turned to the evening paper today, rolled eyes or contorted corners of the mouth were not uncommon. At least men accompanied their statements about the title with condescending gestures, the older the more frequently. Women, on the other hand, hardly ever expressed disdain. The Ringier title therefore met with far greater interest among the female sex.
Not surprisingly, the various gazettes in the three cities are primarily read by the older public. The daily Baslerstab is an exception - it finds readers in all age groups.
How people will react to another free title is not clear from this survey. However, 32, or just under one-sixth of all respondents, stated that they had not read any free titles on the days surveyed. A good half of them expressed a fundamental disdain for this type of press - for a variety of reasons.
In addition to the non-readers, however, there are also those who read several free titles. In Zurich, 16 people had looked at just one title, 18 at two, 7 at three and 3 at four different free newspapers. One 68-year-old woman even read all five Zurich titles on the two days in question - 20 Minuten and .ch twice each! In Basel, 15 people picked up just one title, 22 read two, 7 consumed three and 2 people four. In Bern, 15 people leafed through just one free paper, 17 were interested in two, 11 read three and 4 read four free papers.
One more result should be mentioned here: If the free titles are read on paper, the e-papers play a subordinate role. Only eight people stated that they read one or more titles on the computer. Five younger men read 20 Minuten online (three of them in addition to print, two online only), and one each read Cash daily (print and online), the Baslerstab and the Berner Bär. And the only woman, a 57-year-old, had read .ch on the Internet.
Markus Knöpfli
Three different marketsOf the three cities in the golden triangle, Basel is the agglomeration with the densest free newspaper market. In addition to 20 Minuten, .ch, heute and Cash daily, the Baslerstab also competes there five times a week for the favor of readers and advertisers. Although Bern has as many as six titles with Berner Bär and Anzeiger Region Bern (ARB), both free papers are "only" distributed twice a week. Zurich has the lowest density of daily free papers, at least since the beginning of the year, when the Tagblatt der Stadt Zürich changed its publication frequency to once a week. (mk)
Free newspapers: the survey methodologyThe present street survey is by no means representative. Werbewoche reporter Markus Knöpfli went to frequented squares in Basel, Bern and Zurich on three consecutive mornings (each between 8:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.) and interviewed 57 passers-by each. The selection was random. The kick-off was on Wednesday, November 22, in Bern, near the Federal Palace and in front of the Kurhotel. On Thursday, November 23, it was Zurich's turn in the area of the School of Design, and Basel followed on Friday, November 24, at the Messeplatz. Measured against the real population structures, men came up a bit short overall in this survey. In addition, 14- to 34-year-olds are clearly overrepresented and people aged 55 and over are clearly underrepresented.
The respondents had to be at least 14 years old and able to understand German. Furthermore, they had to live in the city where the survey was currently taking place. The specific question was then: "Have you already read the free title xy today, did you read xy yesterday?" If respondents answered in the affirmative, or both, they were further asked whether they had read the title on paper or online.
It is clear that daily newspapers such as 20 Minuten, .ch, Cash daily and Baslerstab had an advantage in terms of questioning because they could be named twice. In principle, only one mention was possible for the Abendzeitung heute, as well as for the weekly title Tagblatt der Stadt Zürich, which appears on Wednesdays, and for the twice-weekly title Berner Bär, which appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Anzeiger Region Bern (ARB), which appears on Wednesdays and Fridays. The ARB was at a particular disadvantage because the survey was conducted in Bern on its publication day and only in the morning. (mk)