Let's recap what has happened to the print media industry in Hong Kong in the past year. Satirical magazine Spike closed shop just shy of its first anniversary, the weekly Far Eastern Economic Review turned monthly and the Asian Wall Street Journal went tabloid. Chinese-language Hong Kong Economic Times was also listed and two more free sheets went into circulation.
If all this sounds familiar, it is. As recently as 2001, Time Inc suffered a major casualty after its Hong Kong-based Asiaweek magazine folded after more than 26 years. In February 1994, Oriental Press Group launched the city's third English-language daily, Eastern Express, only to see the plug pulled as costs ballooned and losses piled up.
The following June, the publisher of the top-selling Chinese-language Oriental Daily News faced stiff competition in the form of Apple Daily. Hitting the newsstands at $2, entrepreneur Jimmy Lai Chee-ying's Apple Daily proved so popular that, even after raising the price to $5 in late 1995, the newspaper saw its circulation reach 310,000 copies.
This made it a close second to Oriental Daily, which sold about 400,000 copies. Unhappy with the situation and wanting to extend its lead, Oriental Daily was repriced at a cheaper $2. Other publications were soon dragged into the price war - and many became casualties.
Each development is the result of a commercial decision. For example, Stephen Vines, the erstwhile publisher of Spike, pulled the plug because 'there was never enough capital to sustain it and the hope was to get it off the ground to show people that there is a product'.
Peter Kann, chairman of Dow Jones & Co, which owns the Review and the Journal, said the weekly was in the red for six years. Sing Tao News and Centaline Property Agency chairman Shih Wing-ching were encouraged by the success of Metro's business model to enter the burgeoning free sheet business.