Bloomberg Businessweek Taking Print Delivery Into Own Hands

from Foliomag.com

Bloomberg Businessweek has been rapidly expanding an "alternative distribution" plan to print subscribers. Since last December the magazine has been partnering with newspaper publishers and other delivery services to have the magazine hand-delivered with the Friday morning paper. Currently, 9 percent of the magazine's 860,000 domestic print subscribers already receive the magazine this way. The publisher wants to expand into other metro regions and raise that to 30 percent by the end of the year.
And that figure is just a 4Q 2011 goal. The magazine likely won't stop there. Instead, to counteract delays caused by the Postal Service's FSS equipment and a potential five-day delivery schedule, it will continue to explore ways to transition more print subscriber copies away from USPS delivery and into co-delivery with newspaper publishers and other private delivery services.

For many, the USPS simply appears to be a giant vortex requiring ever larger sums for less and less service.  The whole business model faces strategic and intractable challenges, which, Oh by the way, cannot be addressed without literally several Acts of Congress.

Enter the White Knight of Newspapers!  This private sector industry is the only other enterprise that can touch every driveway, every day.  Newspapers can combine this distribution advantage with robust printing and inserting capabilities to duplicate and exceed the performance of mail stream based products.

Look for weekly publishers and regional newspapers to expand this growing partnership.