Mediaguardian.co.uk (reg required) reports:
Four daily newspapers slashed their cover price today, heralding the unexpected return of a price war.
Richard
Desmond cut the cover price of his Daily Express tabloid by 10p to 30p
and reduced the price of the Daily Star to 30p, down from 35p.Rival Associated Newspapers slashed the cost of the Daily Mail by 10p
to 30p, boasting on its front page that it was "real value for money".
All of which means, of course, that the Express is now sold for just 50p more than it’s actually worth.
I thank you.
I like that idea: “Free 20p for every reader”. It’s also much more practical than the Evening Standard’s occasional “Free pint of beer for every reader” which I find is never taped in securely enough and spills all over my trousers. Particularly embarrassing with fellow commuters glaring angrily.
“Free pint of beer for every reader” backfired horribly some time in the early 1990s for the Green Final (the Saturday sports paper produced by the Aberdeen Press & Journal). They forgot to put in the terms & conditions “only one voucher per person” or similar. Thus legions of canny (read: tight) Aberdonians sussed that all they had to do was buy multiple copies of the paper for 15p a go and they could drink as much McEwans Export as their pasty bodies could handle. Don’t ask me how I know this.
People still buy newspapers? Whay do they do that then? Makes no sense, surely?