Wire In The Blood

“The trilling wire in the blood/sings
below inveterate scars/appeasing long-forgotten wars.” –T.S.
Elliot’s Four Quartets

Some would say local interest is high for the audited
circulation figures for the Santa Barbara News-Press, due
out October 30. The N-P, like virtually all dailies in the
United States, has had declining numbers since 2004 — and has been
claiming a daily circulation of 41,000 in each of their many press
releases since July 6. But the accurate figures are more
complicated.

The last reported figures for News-Press circulation,
as of March 31, 2006, reveal a Total Average Paid Circulation of
42,375 Sunday, 42,145 Monday through Friday. Buried within those
two impressive numbers, there is a component labeled “Other Paid
Circulation,” which for the N-P is 4,505 Mon-Fri, and
1,551 Sunday. These are copies sold in bulk to hotels, employee
programs, schools, and other third party sponsors.

Advertisers have recently come to realize a great deal of
“padding” could be obtained via these seemingly worthy distribution
outlets. As such, from the September 19 edition of Editor and
Publisher:

“While these techniques are not outright fraud
as the [2004] misstatements of circulation figures were, we felt
aggressive use of some of these lower-quality techniques would
signal a problem with circulation and would therefore pose future
risk to advertising rate stability,” wrote analysts in the study.
[The study referenced is by Prudential Equity Research of the
top 50 papers in the U.S. ]

If national trends are any indication, A Local Daily
will have little justification to initiate its
annual rate increase, in spite of the “setting
the record straight” realpolitick of A Local Blonde during the
height of the N-P diaspora.

Virtually all the big players on the national daily newspaper
scene are going to take a hit on circulation, according to
E&P’s early look at the Audit Bureau of Circulations
figures:

Earlier this week, E&P reported
that overall circulation data for the upcoming FAS-FAX are trending
much like past reporting periods, with industry sources expecting
daily down 2.5% and Sunday down 3%, and some major metros are
reporting record losses. Now we have the actual numbers for several
papers.

I venture few of those national papers had a city wide effort to
cancel their subscriptions, or citizen protests outside their
offices to add to the Diminishment of the Daily paper.

And from an E&P story on the 2005 Prudential
report:

In the most recent study, Prudential found
that other paid circulation, which is comprised of hotel,
newspapers-in-education (NIE), employee, and third-party sales
copies, was up 6.9%. As a contrast, for the period ending September
2004, other-paid circulation was up 34.2%.
However, the report notes that even though there’s a reduction
in the reliance in other paid circ, the category is still “stemming
the losses in home delivery and single-copy sales.”Overall, total daily circ decreased 2.7% in March when compared
to the same period last year. Home delivered copies dropped 2.7%.
Discounted copies were up 85%. Single-copy sales slipped 7.1%. This
category acts as a barometer for the health of the industry because
“it’s the most basic example of a consumer actively seeking out the
newspaper,” the report said.

It must be said that giving away papers ain’t no bad thing; for
the past 20 years The Independent has pioneered that
concept in Santa Barbara. As the foundation of our economic
viability, our company has treated free circulation seriously,
subscribing to a VAC,
an independent auditing company for the same amount of time. We are
the only audited freebie in town.

Keeping accurate track of numbers has eluded
A Local Daily paper for quite some time, in spite of the
historical record [a great place to begin is
here, for an exhaustive examination of the N-P
antecedents], as evidenced by the erroneous tagline on the front
page Banner, “Our 151st Year.” The origin of what is now called the
“Santa Barbara News-Press” properly begins October 20, 2000.

Contest: Everyone In the Pool! My pick for the
final audit number (this will be the total number for Santa
Barbara, Goleta, Carp, Montecito, Summerland, Buellton/Santa Ynez,
Gaviota): 38,576

The reader’s entry closest to the actual
total will win a cool prize, and be memorialized in some nifty, as
yet undetermined fashion — probably not a subscription to A
Local Daily. Contest ends October 29, 12 am (or when the
actual results are made public).

The name of this piece
is: Lest any unsuspecting SBMB reader wrongly consider
Club Reporter a verse-spouting repository of all things
culture‘d, I just happen to love the eponymous
BBC America series, starring the ab fab Robson Green. And the
quote is apt.