PRMan

So the Standard has gone freesheet after the seemingly snap announcement a week or so ago. The age old London brand has decided to negate any kind of paid-for income after various trials of scaled charging and late-night free issues. The move will come as sobering news to the London Lite, battle scarred over its epic contest with the recently deceased thelondonpaper, of Murdoch paternity. The Standard will now compete with the Lite directly for those daily grasping evening hands.

The thing is that they are profoundly different products so the circulation figures will make interesting readers as they begin to come in. A quick eye-poll (of questionable empirical value) saw about seven to two reading the Standard on the train home today. This may be an obvious skew as it’s the first ever Standard free issue so doubtless people will be experimenting. However, the coming weeks will clearly see a battle – fashion and celeb over what is currently still a half decent evening newspaper including some fashion and celeb. Which one wins out will give a telling view of the capital’s commuting population.

But there are other dynamics involved, those brought up by the Media Guardian today for example, can the Standard maintain its current editorial product after the change? The change in distribution slashes a fair amount of income from the title and good writers may well go elsewhere; it seems obvious that editorial will be slashed in some areas anyway. So the paper is likely to lose some quality and clout as a daily title. Whether its depth of news coverage will change and editorial focus move more towards what the London Lite believes people want to read remains to be seen.

At the same time the London Lite continues to lose money as it tries to make the old-fashioned ad-funded paper model work. It also remains to be seen whether it will ever succeed in this mammoth task. The Standard enters the ‘free’ world at a difficult time and in uncharted waters also trying to succeed with ad-funded circulation. Both titles face the dual challenge of finally balancing the books whilst maintaining enough good people behind the scenes to give their audiences and their advertisers exactly what they want. The sceptic in me is decidedly dubious as to whether they will do it. Either way it’s certain to be an interesting ride…stay tuned.