Are Sunday papers getting too bulky?

simu

I think so. I never read most of the supplememnts and now they're throwing in "free CDs" and so on as well. This will start to backfire as people are becoming more aware of recycling and the cost of waste disposal. Thoughts?

monument

No, I haven’t seen a real bulky paper since last May, the Sunday edition of the LA Times is seriously unbelievable – so much so I'll take a photo of the side of it of when I'm over there this May and post it up.

L5

simu wrote:

I think so. I never read most of the supplememnts and now they're throwing in "free CDs" and so on as well. This will start to backfire as people are becoming more aware of recycling and the cost of waste disposal. Thoughts?

You'll soon need a forklift to take home the Sunday Times,that paper is a joke. So much shít in it

A Dub in Glasgo

No one is forcing anyone to buy the 'extra' large papers with all the additional tat. If it is too big, do not buy.

Me - I am happy with the Sunday Herald in Glasgow and The Sunday Business Post and The Tribune when I am in Ireland.

flogen

Well the SBP is usually my paper of choice if I am going to buy one, and while it has a few suppliments it's never overly bulky.
The Sunday Indo has been a bit much from time to time, I don't know if it's regularly as thick as I've seen it before because I don't usually buy it (I swear that's not a double entendre )

flogen

Cabaal

I wouldn't say there getting to bulky, however the amount of useless music CD's with papers these days is gone beyond a joke.

Shrimp

If it isn't one thing to winge about it's another.. fgs dont buy it if you dont like it.

aidan_walsh

Shrimp wrote:

If it isn't one thing to winge about it's another.. fgs dont buy it if you dont like it.

The ironing is delicious...

sleepwalker

the times on a sunday is a little masterpiece to be honest a 12 hour shift sitting on my arse doing nothing and it keeps me occupied for at least half of it

some of the sections are slightly ridiculous though, is the sunday buisness post worth giving a shot ?

whiskeyman

sleepwalker wrote:

is the sunday buisness post worth giving a shot ?

Definately.
Its a very indepth read with good sections.
It's the only Sunday Irish paper I'd go near.
The Sunday Indo is just a joke... my Mum still gets it (she admits it only for the celeb gossip!).

I occasionaly pick up the Observor too...

MrJoeSoap

Having to cut the mastheads off the papers in work on a Sunday is horrific. We throw out at least 200 papers on a Sunday, as well as 50-100 cd's a lot of the time. Such a waste of paper, there has to be a better way of running things.

Washout

MrJoeSoap wrote:

Having to cut the mastheads off the papers in work on a Sunday is horrific. We throw out at least 200 papers on a Sunday, as well as 50-100 cd's a lot of the time. Such a waste of paper, there has to be a better way of running things.

I cant believe that there isnt a recycling facility provided to shops for collection of unsold newspapers


On a side note you should see the thickness of sunday papers in the states.

even the daily ny times is probably bulkier than the irish sunday papers

Flukey

The novelty of free CDs has long since worn off. They had a Niall Tobin one recently. I mean, come on! :rolleyes: Then you get a lot of the same songs coming again and again and what look like being good ones turn out to be cover versions. You might listen to them once and that would be it.

Tobias Greeshman

The thickness of the Sunday times is unbelievable (well it was last time I seen it), I seen skinnier encyclopedias. As for the free CD's that are being distributed with them are dyre, there music that I personally would never listen too.

Simu brought up a good point in relation towards waste disposal, if sunday papers follow in this light, there almost definetly are going to be problems.

monument

Here's a Sunday edition of the LA Times...

monument

Note the string holding it all together...

simu

Mad - you'd be all day getting through that!

cashback

I picked up the Sunday times last week in the shop and thought I had picked up a few at the same time, but no, it was just one paper! Does any newspaper really need a Style magazine?!

monument

simu wrote:

Mad - you'd be all day getting through that!

Yeah. About half the day.

A good bit of it was advertisement supplements and a classified section, after that what I can remember is the main paper (including healthy international coverage), ‘California’, Business, Opinion, Calendar 1, Calendar 2 (entertainment/arts supplements), sports, and an editorial based ‘property’ or ‘homes’ section.

Thankfully, the place I was staying in recycles.

cuckoo

Look in the bins outside newsagents on Sundays, there's loads of supplements stuffed into them that ppl not only couldn't be bothered reading, but couldn't be bothered carrying home. It makes me think of that ad for health insurance on the telly where the guy picks and chooses the supplements he wants from each paper.

The Sunday Times really irritates me with its supplements; that kids thing and the one with the job ads must only be read by a tiny percentage of their readership.

Stephen

I used to work in a shop as a student a couple of years ago. Sunday morning was a nightmare, because of the sunday ****ing times. The bastard paper ships all the supplements separate to the main paper, so some poor bastard in each shop has to put every copy of it together in the morning, just to see half of the poxy things thrown away anyway.

Dear sunday times, you = suck.

DubTony

Stephen wrote:

I used to work in a shop as a student a couple of years ago. Sunday morning was a nightmare, because of the sunday ****ing times. The bastard paper ships all the supplements separate to the main paper, so some poor bastard in each shop has to put every copy of it together in the morning, just to see half of the poxy things thrown away anyway.

Dear sunday times, you = suck.

As an ex owner of a Centra store, this was always a serious bone of contention with the newspaper distributors. My shop's busiest day was Sunday (across the road from a church and beside a pub), and the number of supplements over the years grew considerably. It started with a magazine in the News of the World and has developed to what we see today.

As Stephen said, that huge newspaper isn't delivered to the shop like that. Only the "News" section is delivered on Sunday morning. Some of the supplements are now delivered on a Friday. The distributor pays the newsagent 2 to 3 cent per newspaper for inserting supplements. Shops need staff in store at least an hour earlier to sort this stuff out and with Sunday pay rates at a premium it actually costs the retailer money to do this. Add to that the cost of getting rid of unsolds, (most waste disposal companies offer an expensive newspaper recycling service, but paper and plastic must be seperated so there's more labour involved in pulling magazines out of plastic bags) and newspaper distributors and publishers have retailers over a barrel.

There's no doubt there's a huge demand for these supplements. So much so that if a supplement is missing from a paper it wouldn't sell as many on any given Sunday. A worrying issue now is that these supplements have started to appear in Saturday's papers and on some weekdays. They basically offer more space for publishers to sell advertising but without having to prove that anybody actually looks at them. The sales figure of the newspaper determines the cost to advertise.

The only way it's going to change is if people are charged for getting rid of the newspapers they buy (like retailers). They'll soon go back to a newspaper on a Sunday morning instead of buying a library.

Flukey

Saying "don't buy" is all very well, but ususally you do want the particular paper itself, but not all the junk and supplements that come with it. Sundays are crazy now. The free CDs, as we have said hereabouts before, have become more of an annoyance now, as the novelty has worn off. Now they are starting on DVD's!

Easily_Irritated

Definatley too bulky. Butat the same time Sunday mornings are all about reading the papers and being hungover.

But the times or the indo would still be bulky if they dropped half a dozen supplements! Won't someone think of the trees?