A couple of weeks ago I posted an item about newspaper launches in Kent by Kosmedia which mentioned en passant that its flagship title, Kent on Sunday, was "boasting a verified distribution of 122,417 copies" a week.
This prompted an executive from a rival group to ask me: "Who verified it?" In trying to answer that question I've discovered an interesting circulation conundrum. First, the straightforward answer: the company itself is responsible for arriving at the figure but stresses that it does so by "following the proper audit trail" and by consultation with wholesalers. It regards its final total as an "independently audited figure", though I can imagine that rivals will claim otherwise.
So why, given that distribution figures are so important to a paper's ability to attract advertising, does Kosmedia not have its figures audited by ABC, the industry's official auditor? The answer to this is anything but straightforward. Indeed, it opens up a can of worms that highlights, yet again, the unreliability of distribution figures posted by freesheets everywhere, especially in London.
According to the Kosmedia's marketing director, Richard Purvis, it is trapped in a Catch 22 situation. Unlike many free papers, which are posted through doors - or, in the case of the London giveaways, handed out in the street or placed in dump-bins - Kent on Sunday is largely distributed through newsagents.
Copies are delivered to those shops by wholesalers alongside the paid-for national titles, such as the News of the World and Sunday Times and so on. These deliveries are made well before retailers are up and around to receive them in person and therefore they are unable to sign for them. This is not a problem for the paid-for papers because it is not in the retailers' interest to exaggerate the numbers they receive (and the wholesalers keep accounts also, of course). Anyway, through their accounting systems, newsagents know how many they do sell and how many unsolds they return. Their income depends on those numbers being correct.
But there is no financial incentive for them to keep a record of how many copies of a free title like Kent on Sunday arrive, how many are picked up by their customers and how many are returned to the wholesaler. It's too much of a chore to fill in a form, and there is no reward for doing so. This means that there is no signed paperwork for the official auditors, ABC Bulk (the free papers' division of ABC), to verify.
An ABC spokesman, who did not want to talk about the specific case of Kent on Sunday, pointed out that the paper had been certified in the past (and still is for the small amount of paid-for sales). But Kosmedia withdrew from ABC Bulk because, says Purvis, "the whole system was unworkable". The company has since been seeking a compromise solution in order to win back its ABC audit, with the latest meeting taking place this week. It was not successful. Though it understands the need for ABC to have strict rules, it is none too amused by the apparent difference in treatment between Kent on Sunday and the three main free titles in London.
That, of course, is the intriguing bit. Given the revelations of dumping and other questionable practices in the distribution of London Lite and thelondonpaper, it was clear that ABC went to great lengths to find a compromise to ensure that they could go on receiving a certificate. The signatures of the street vendors are deemed to be acceptable.
Similarly, ABC appears unduly relaxed about the use of dump-bins by Metro. It accepts the signature of the delivery driver for verification purposes. So what genuine independent check is there on the numbers of papers delivered to each dump-bin? How can anyone be sure about the numbers removed? Where is the genuine independent audit paper trail in those cases? No retailer signs copies in and out. No wholesaler is involved either.
If ABC accepts the word of the publishers - and those companies' own delivery drivers and vendors - about the distribution of London's freesheets then why not do so for Kent on Sunday? Surely the ABC council should find a way to help a paper doing its best to keep newsprint alive. It is tempting, is it not, to conclude that there is one rule for the big boys and another one for the small ones?
