This article in the NY Times says very little about Cleveland, but the market clearly wasn't big enough for two alt weeklies. Free Times' competitor, Scene, has been around for 30 years, and there was precious little to distinguish between the two publications.
- Stung by brutal competition and an even tougher economy, the raging rock throwers of alternative media are behaving like civilized monopolists, dividing up markets and cutting their losses.
This became clear last week, when what had been a bare-knuckle fight to the finish by the nation's two largest chains of alternative weeklies — New Times Inc. and Village Voice Media — suddenly became a much more collaborative affair.
New Times agreed to shut down its money-losing Los Angeles New Times when Village Voice Media agreed to shut down its money-losing paper in Cleveland. New Times received more than $8 million from the two transactions, according to people with knowledge of the deal.
The willingness of the two ferociously competitive chains to make a deal in their common interest could mean that the next big deal by the companies could leave only one standing.
The closings also raise the question of whether alternative weeklies are becoming pint-size versions of their daily counterparts — print media franchises that need a monopoly in their respective markets to prosper. New Times lost more than $15 million battling Village Voice Media's more established LA Weekly, while Village Voice Media was losing more than $500,000 a year in Cleveland, with its Free Times.
Both chains, which each have revenues of around $100 million a year, have bought and closed competition in various markets in an effort to garner market share. New Times, which now owns 11 papers, bought and folded two struggling weeklies when it entered the Los Angeles market six years ago, but it never seriously threatened LA Weekly, a paper that had been around for 18 years.
Article comments
1 - Adam
Agree that these two were cut from the same mold, but the Freetimes had a much better web site. As a displaced Clevelander it was a nice diversion once a week. The PD web site makes my head hurt.
2 - Eric Olsen
Adam, I totally agree about the sites - I used to get my concert calendar from their site every week for my radio show. There's always the Scene site.
3 - Shannon
Another Cleveland refugee here...I am going to miss the Free Times if only for Eric Broder's column. Dear Eric O -- see if you can get Eric B here on Blogcritics! Voila. Problem solved. I can only re-read my Great Indoors book so many times.