A Credit Suisse analyst has predicted Fairfax will implement plans to stop printing their metropolitan weekday papers this year, moving to a digital only model for Monday to Friday.
Fraser McLeish, telecommunications and media analyst, Credit Suisse, is quoted as saying “We expect Fairfax Media to formally outline its plans for a move to a digital only weekday model for the metro titles”. McLeish says Fairfax will be taking steps to ‘significantly reduce print exposure’ and to become a smaller more sustainable business.
Fairfax weekday issues are under financial pressure, and have been slated by CEO Greg Heywood as unlikely to be part of the company’s long term future. The papers are also now being hit by major overseas competitors with similar left-leaning editorial, and major resources, moving into the Australian online press market, with The Guardian already established here and the New York Times currently in the process of setting up a business here.
McLeish has told clients that Fairfax will lay down a timetable for transitioning to digital only this year, and says it will be selling off or merging its regional newspaper business.
The Sydney Morning Herald weekday is currently printed at Rural Press, Richmond having switched form Chullora two years ago, while The Age is printed at a Fairfax factory in Ballarat. Both plants also print regional titles and some commercial work, all the Good Guys catalogues for instance are printed at Ballarat.
However some question the digital first strategy of Heywood and the Board. In today’s media landscape, where Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising revenues, having a profitable digital advertising model is a real challenge, with many news organisations still struggling to fund their content online. Fairfax itself saw its digital ad revenues drop by 4.5 per cent on the first half of the 2016 financial year.
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