[modeleng] 'Smoke Rings' - Comment and now.................

I think that is a fairly accurate description of the problem as also
detailed in the editorial of EIM but has anyone else noticed the mistake on
the cover of the latest ME. (4252)?

Grrrrrrrrr My WHS stocks ME but I did not buy this issue for a week because
of this!  :-(

Nigel


I understand the problem is roughly as follows:

At the moment a number of newspaper/magazine wholesale distributors have the
country divided up and they have the sole rights to distribute
magazines/papers in these areas. Thus they can put the odd copy of ME or EIM
on the delivery van to be delivered to a newsagent along with the bulk
delivery of daily papers, etc.  Distribution costs are shared equally by all
of their customers. The EU wishes to stop this practice, as being
monopolistic.

It is envisaged that in the free-for-all that will ensue, supermarkets etc
will arrange their own distribution thus saving on overall cost leaving the
existing distributors to fight it out among themselves for the crumbs that
may remain, with the multiplicity of distributors duplicating rounds leading
to inefficiencies.

This may have an effect on the cost of newspapers and those magazines with
the larger circulation in that the supermarkets will pass the savings on to
the consumer by way of a price reduction. This will have a knock-on effect
for the local newsagent probably because they will not be able to compete on
price and so  their sales will go down. This could then make it uneconomical
for the distributors to carry and deliver low circulation magazines, such as
ME and EIM, particularly to those newsagents not in the larger conurbations.

Another problem is that there are now so many special interest magazines on
the shelves that some larger news sellers have already decided to
rationalise on the number that they carry (you wont find ME on the top shelf
at Tesco's), concentrating on those with the biggest circulation and thus
the more profitable. W H Smith have already stopped selling ME and EIM in
all but their larger stores.

I fear that the likes of ME and EIM will end up as subscription only
magazines.

Regards

Mike Leahy
South Ockendon - UK

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