The recent
scandal involving the “inflation” of circulation figures at SPH Media Trust
reminds me one of my first working experiences when I joined the Old Rogue, who
was then in the process of starting his magazine. We had clicked and he asked
if I could help out in driving circulation. As it turned out, the printed figure
of 10,000 that was being placed in his media kit didn’t match with the actual
print run.
We had
arguments over this. I tried to explain that I needed to know where magazines were
going because potential advertisers would want to know. He would always reply, “I’m
hiring you to get sales not to be a back office magician playing with
circulation figures.” It then reached a stage when I had a potential advertiser
who was asking for accurate circulation figures and he replied “You should ask
her what figures she wants to see.”
I remember these
instances because it highlights one of the aspects of media business. Everyone
knows editorial because people use media for the content. Everyone knows the
advertising side because that is the revenue that pays the bills. Everyone
forgets the third pillar, which is distribution or circulation. While circulation
may be less well known than the other two, its an essential pillar because
there’s no point of having the other two if the medium is being distributed to
people. Advertisers want to know that who is reading their ad and editorial
want to know that what they write is going to the people who will read.
My Dad freaked
at the idea of me working as an ad salesman for a small and unknown
publication. His point was that an ad salesperson was the type of person that everyone
would run away from. He made the point that “it wouldn’t be so bad if you were
selling for the Straits Times, everyone knows the Straits Times.”
Well, he had a
point. Back on in those days, the Straits Times was sent to just about every
English speaking household in the country. Circulation was around two million
and the argument was that a copy would be sent to one place (mainly a house or
office) and everyone would read it. An outline of what things like circulation
and readership can be found at:
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/explainer-sph-media-circulation-readership-saga-2087996
One can also
learn a bit more about what the saga at SPH means:
https://mothership.sg/2023/01/sph-media-circulation-scandal/
Our government
loves technology and has created program after program to try and make sure
that Singapore is a shinning and glowing red dot in the world of technological
progress. However, when it comes to the media, where good old fashioned print and
broadcast are shielded from competition – including from each other.
I think of Mr.
Leslie Fong, who was editor in chief of the Straits Times and Vice-President of
Marketing (as a disclaimer, Mr. Fong has worked with my mother and knows my
father). Mr. Fong has been a champion of SPH’s business model. At the Ad Asia Symposium
in 2005, Mr. Fong declared “The Effort to Go Tabloid is a Futile Effort to Dumb
Down for Younger Eyeballs at the Expense of Older Ones.” At that point, the representative
of Bennet & Coleman told him “You are a prisoner of your own business
model,” and proceeded to tell him where the future was.
It was
unfortunate for Mr. Fong that in this instance, he had to address people from
elsewhere. In Singapore, Mr. Fong is celebrated as an elder statesman who can
take ministers to task for having the audacity to make announcements on social
media instead of calling the mainstream media to a press conference.
Part of this
model that Mr. Fong defends so passionately involves being very critical of
online media. We are constantly reminded that we need to look at the source of
information and not to trust everything online. Unfortunately, this has started
to sound like the time taxi drivers made noise about Uber Drivers cheating on
their taxes only to find that the billing information was all on the Uber Platform
and Uber Drivers were declaring honestly, whilst the taxi drivers on the other
hand started getting uncomfortable questions from the tax authorities.
As a blog
publisher, I would love to claim that I had as many readers as any of the SPH
publications. I would also love to get advertising revenue like the SPH papers.
Unfortunately, Google has a nasty way of tracking exactly how many people click
on my blog and the advertisers only pay when people click on the ads.
Far from making
things murkier, technology makes it more difficult to hide. Let’s face it, just
as governments try and usually fail to control internet content, they’re active
in the sphere of “cashless technology.” Simply put, its harder to hide when all
payments are electronic and easy to trace.
The second
point that becomes clear is – “Why now?” Surely, this issue with circulation
isn’t exactly new and can be a coincidence that the “inflation” of circulation
figures is only being discovered now that you have someone from a business
background running the show.
The fact is SPH
Media Trust used to be known as Singapore Press Holdings Limited. This was a
company that had to answer to shareholders. Its survival depended on the fact
that it had advertisers who were willing to advertise in its publication. As
Singapore Press Holdings Limited, the accountability was to shareholders and advertisers
on whom revenue came from.
However, as SPH
Media Trust, the story is different. There are no longer any shareholders
demanding a financial return. They have “trustees,” who happen to be government
linked and the need to prove that you are worthy of the advertising dollar no
longer becomes a pressing issue when there’s a sugar daddy in the shape of the
government.
https://www.sph.com.sg/about-us/
There’s no pressure on management to “deliver” a financial return when you are a non-profit and one has to ask why such potentially revenue damaging information only comes out when the entity no longer has to shareholders to answer to.
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