Responding to a Trinity Mirror analyst meeting last night, the broker says that whilst the rationale behind the strategy is sound (adding that something does need to be done after “years of mismanagement”), the paper is unlikely to be able to buck the trend of a secular decline for the UK tabloids market.
The report says that the best the Mirror is likely to achieve would be to take an increasing share of a declining market; this could help to push up advertising revenues a little. Trinity is hoping that the Mirror will realise year on year circulation stability, or slight growth, by May 2003. In August, sales dropped by 2.1%.
The revamp programme, announced in February this year (see Trinity Mirror Results Beat Expectations, Mirror Relaunch Announced), aims to attract a younger audience (Merrill notes that 30,000 Mirror readers die every year) and to increase purchase frequency of existing readers.
In order to achieve this the title’s brand and editorial content have been reworked. A promotional push has been used to try and get people to sample the new style Mirror.
However, Merrill Lynch believes that given the long-term decline in the tabloid sector, Trinity Mirror’s strategy is unlikely to bear any real fruit.
