Stopping by my local Starbucks at 2 p.m. today, I found two copies of USA Today on the bottom shelf of an otherwise empty rack, set aside for New York Times sales. USAT has been available at 6,500 U.S. Starbucks stores since March 15.The clerk asked, "Is that all?" Then, he looked at his cash register, perplexed. "This is my first USA Today,'' he said. "I'm a virgin."
The audit
I counted pages and advertisements. I did not include what appeared to be house ads (and there were more than a few). I did, however, count even the smallest, classified-like display ads. I do not know whether today's edition is representative of a typical paper. Here's what I found:
A section, 10 pages, seven ads: Hotels.com, Quattron, Homewood Suites, Heritage for the Blind, Mercedes-Benz, United of Omaha Life Insurance, and getaroom.com.
Money, eight pages, 10 ads: Sprint, Wells Fargo, Auction Showcase (three small ads), Real Estate Marketplace (two small ads), Highland Springs Ranch, World Reserve Monetary Exchange, and news10.net.
Sports, 10 pages, one ad: ESPN.
Life, eight pages, 18 ads: Rock 'n Roll Fantasy Camp, Scribner/Simon and Schuster, Bantam/Random House, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Project Sunshine, Mira, Marketplace Today (11 small ads).
A 10-page sports section, with just one ad?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I noticed a carefully worded house ad on the back of the A section, below the weather page. (That's some prime real estate.) It's countering negative publicity about the recent circulation slide. It says:
"America has spoken.
USA Today: 1,808,631
The Wall Street Journal: 1,678,498
The numbers have spoken, too. Both confirm that USA Today is still the No. 1 national newspaper in print circulation."
Only below that does it disclose that the totals don't include the WSJ's 400,000-something online subscribers.
It'll be interesting to see whether Rupert Murdoch's attack dogs pay attention. Murdoch vs. Martore in a cage fight would be very, very interesting.
Hunke is in trouble. Way out of his league with this job. Have another scotch Dave!
ReplyDeleteWhat other tricks you going to show Craig and Gracia Mr. Hunke? The Starbucks one was goooood! Now that they are on to you, what else you got for them?
ReplyDeleteI'm astonished by the sports section thing. Everyone knows if you want to sell to men, you put the ad in the sports section. Big screen TVs, car parts & service. . . all that kind of stuff.
ReplyDelete