Last summer's launch of two free newspapers in Hong Kong for a while threatened newspaper bosses with the prospect of plunging circulation of paid-for dailies on the assumption readers would prefer the free products.
A year on, the threat has dissipated. A recent survey shows that more than 60 per cent of respondents are sticking to reading paid-for dailies only.
Media research firm Synovate's first-half Media Atlas, released earlier this month, showed that the readership market share of paid-for dailies has stabilised and is regaining ground from the freebies. The phone survey of about 500 people found that 62.5 per cent of respondents read only leading paid-for newspapers such as Apple Daily, Ming Pao Daily News, Oriental Daily News, Sing Tao Daily and The Sun.
The market share of the paid dailies rose almost 3 percentage points from 59 per cent in the first quarter of this year, bouncing back above the 60 per cent mark registered in August last year, when Sing Tao's freebie Headline Daily and property agent boss Shih Wing-ching's am730 hit the streets.
Including the incumbent Metro Publishing Hong Kong's Metro Daily, the three freebies notch up a daily circulation of one million and, of those polled, 11.4 per cent were loyal readers of one freesheet or another during the latest survey period. That's a drop from 12.8 per cent in August last year and down from the 12.7 per cent found in a survey in the first quarter of this year.
Managements at the freebies have long argued that free and paid-for newspapers can co-exist in the market. The survey results showed 26.7 per cent of respondents read both free and major paid-for dailies every day. The proportion of such readers is relatively stable at about 27 per cent of those polled.