Italian Publisher Expands Add-On Business To Teach OC Newspapers to Sell Real Estate

Italian Publisher Expands Add-On Business To Teach OC Newspapers to Sell Real Estate
The May 24, 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal reports that in 1993 the Italian newspaper La Repubblica conjured up an incentive to increase circulation – sexual-education tapes for children, which la Repubblica sold every week with the daily newspaper for an extra $17.00 USD, and the European newspaper industry’s first forays into the so-called add-on business.

This year, the Italian daily set up a consulting business to teach foreign newspapers how to go about selling extras. The new division won its first contract in March, when Russian newspaper Komosolskaya Pravda started selling a collection of 19th-century literature books.

La Repubblica’s new consulting group, L’Espresso’s, move underscores to what lengths publishers are going to counter a drop in revenue and profit because of increased competition from alternative media, such as the Internet, and the free press, “Any newspaper which wont’ be boosting its revenue by getting consumers to pay fro products and services for an extra price is putting its survival at risk in the next five years”, the WSJ quotes Paul Zwillenberg, global head of media practice at CC&C Strategy Consultants in London.
Germany’s Suddeuthsche Zeitung, Poland’s Gazeta Wyboreza, and the Guardina and the Telegraph in Britain have diversified revenue streams with add-on products. In Brazil, papers like O Globo of Rio de Janeiro and A Folha of Sao Paulo also have tried.
With the cooling off in the housing market the drop in revenue and profit for newspapers in Southern California are particularly problematic. As a defensive move, a major Libertarian newspaper in Southern California has announces an agreement with L’Espresso to establish a Real Estate Consultancy Group and an Automotive Marketing and Sales Group. Details are not available, but it is reported that within five years, over 90% of the revenue will come from the new initiatives.


We do not make jokes, we simply watch the Coto de Caza Board of directors, the LA Trash and the Orange Crud Repository and report the facts