Current issue and condition of newspaper digital business in Japan Naoki Onodera Digital Publishing Office Mainichi Shimbun
Introduction Self Introduction NewsML WG Chairman in the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association(NSK). NewsML for NSK development and CMS implementation Deliver news data to US Kindle/US Sony Reader Replica digital newspaper implementation with NewspaperDirect. Core member in File Format WG in Japan Magazine Publishers Association Develop PRISM/PAMP (PSV Aggregator/Distributor Message for Package) with IDEAliance in U.S. Asia Consultant of NewspapeDirect Consultant of Dai Nippon Printing
Landscape of Newspaper Industry in Japan
General Newspaper(105) current news (global, domestic, politics, economy, sports, affair, ) Yomiuri 38% Nation-Wide Newspaper Regional Newspaper Total 27M circulations Prefecture Blocks Hokkaido Chunichi Nishi-Nippon Total 22M circulations. Mainichi Asahi 14% 30.3% Sankei 6% Japanese Newspaper publisher s industry Newspaper Prefecture 45+ Prefecture Newspapers Financial Nikkei 12% Sports Newspaper Total 4.25M circ. by Nation-wide Newspapers City Newspaper local news only Industry Newspaper Total 3.9M circ. 200+ titles. 20+ titles (100k+ circulations) Target will be 50k+ circulation company Free Newspaper shops, consuming articles, based on advertisements General and Sports Newspaper is belong to The Japan Publishers and Editors Association (NSK). Industry Newspaper publishers are belong to the Japan Specialized Newspapers Association
Newspaper Market in Japan Sales amount of Newspaper Market as of 2011 Nation-wide newspaper market 13.75B USD Regional newspaper market 12.5B USD Industry newspaper market 2.5B USD Based on 1 USD = 100JPY 2013/11/12 5
Trends in Sales and Ads 29B USD (2006) to 23B USD (2012) Ads -15% compared over the previous year.
Declining Circulation Fig.1 newspaper circulation and the number of households (excerpt by NSK) Year Amount type of paper general sports Morning & evening Edition morning evening Number of households
Trends in Circulation Whole circulation 47.7M as of 2012. Circulation has been declining by 1M each year since 2009. Revenue constituent Circulation revenue 60.4% Ad revenue 23.9% Other revenue 15.6% Ad revenue constituent is decreasing so much.
Factor of declining circulation The amount of cellar phone in Japan reached over 100M units. It means every national person have mobile. They can read news contents by several ways in real time by free or small fee. General news, not detail or unique news. Many newspaper publishers provides their news contents to not only their own website but also some mobile carrier or media outlet like Yahoo, google. Subscription fee as high as 4000JPY per month. Young and middle ages who don t subscribe newspaper increase year and year.
To supplement declining circulation and ad revenue Pay wall web site or digital subscription service HOWEVER Publishers HAVE TO take into account distributors to protect distributors business
Feature of sales system in Japan Home Delivery System Ratio of home delivery is = 99.1% Ratio of News stand = 0.9% Ratio of mailing = 0.01% Most of newspaper are delivered by home delivery system. Newspaper industry is supported by distributors. 2013/11/12 11
Distributor/delivery agent Exclusive distributor and General distributor Exclusive distributor which handle only one publisher s. It is important strategy for publishers to organize many competitive exclusive distributors. Because the role of the distributor is not only to deliver newspaper but also to explore market aggressively and competitively. The basis of newspaper business in Japan depends on the quality of exclusive distributor which have loyalty in the publishers. However it takes a lot of cost to develop the distributor. General distributor is distributor which handle several multiple publishers. In case of using it, for example, when we have some small circulation in particular area, we contract the distributors to deliver our brand to subscribers. We focus on cost performance and quality of delivering our paper to in time. 2013/11/12 12
Distributor/delivery agent Amount of these distributors is ab 6380. Every distributors are basically independent business owner, so they own and maintain customer s profile. Many publishers don t have customer profiles for subscribers. This is weak point for publishers. It has been preventing publishers from selling digital replica edition directly so far.
Causes to prevent digital subscription service To protect distributors to keep paper subscription. Skeptical about digital newspaper business. BUT
Changes in attitude for distributors and publishers One is consumption tax rate will rise 5% to 8% next Spring. It would have many subscribers stop subscription. To stop subscribers stopping subscription, publishers have to propose attractive bundle service with digital service for engagement. Distributors can t help but accept it. Publishers compensate for it by giving some incentive plan for promoting it. That being said, some publishers stick to paper strategy yet.
Changes in attitude for distributors and publishers Another is good result of branded digital pay-wall service that Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun showed. Thanks to it, many publishers found out the possibility of branded digital pay-wall service.
Nikkei Digital Registration number became over 2M in Aug 2013. Paid registration and free registration March 2010 launch Paid registration is 310,000.
Asahi Shimbun Digital Registration will become over 1M near future. Paid registration became over 100,000 March 2013. Free registration became over 990,000. May 2011 launch
Comparison of pay wall services service 名称 価格 price Only digital edition デジタル版のみ紙との併読 Bundle with print Applicable 対応端末 補足 devices (T= タブレット T:tablet SP= SP:smartphone スマートフォン ) M 毎日 900 900 JPY 円 +500 + 500JPY 円 T SP T SP 限定で見られる新媒体 Y 読売 +157 + 157JPY 円 PC T SP 紙面購読者のみサービス A 朝日 3,800 3800 JPY 円 +1,000 +1000 JPY 円 PC T SP PC 版がベース N 日経 4,000 4000 JPY 円 +1,000 +1000 JPY 円 PC T SP PC 版がベース S 産経 350 350 円 JPY (PC) (PC) PC T SP T=1,500 T = 1500JPY, 円 SP SP は当面無料 is free C Optimized service for T & SP Service for only print subscribers PC edition is basic service PC edition is basic service 中日 +315 +315 JPY 円 PC T SP 紙面購読者のみサービス Service for only print subscribers M:Mainichi Y:Yomiuri A:Asahi N:Nikkei S:Sankei C:Chunichi
The condition of newsstand service and branded service
Newsstand service To draw users who are not subscribers. To draw users who are interested in Japanese news live in overseas To draw users who want to read any titles, anytime, anywhere.
Branded pay wall service Purpose is to draw print subscribers and provide engagement. Influence of consumption tax rate up will be severe. Many publishers are interested in planning their branded pay wall service, ACTUALLY a financial publishers and a general newspaper publishers go well, BUT others struggle to gather registration.
Issues of branded digital service Target is paper subscribers. To reach to non-subscribers, It is necessary to cooperate with newsstand services to draw them into their own branded site.
Problem of newspaper contents System implementation cost increases due to rich functionality same as English one. Problem is Difficulty to extract Japanese text and images from PDFs of replica edition No one has not developed the function ever. It is due to PDFs produced for dedicated printing.
Solution XY-coordinate and the text/image data of replica PDFs. BUT Not every publishers have it in system. So Necessity is an authoring tool to support PDFs XY-coordinate or to specify area of story Text/image data Meta-data for issue
Who? Who can provide the functionality could dominate digital newspaper business in Japan.
Thank you