Guangzhou finds PRC's first free daily

Commuters using Guangzhou's subway can now utilise their time in train compartments by flipping through Yang Cheng Ditie Bao (羊城地鐵報), or YCDTB, mainland China's first free daily newspaper, launched on 1 October 2006.

The free paper is targeting the 800,000 passengers of the city's underground rail system each day. The readership is forecasted to grow to about 2.5 million commuters by 2010 when the massive rail network will branch out to comprise nine lines, compared with four lines today.

In the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the province of Guangdong, competition between free and paid papers has been a matter of life and death.

While Metro Daily, Headline Daily and AM730, the three free dailies for users of Hong Kong's mass transit railway, are accused of threatening the income of traditional papers, similar case has yet to be seen in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong.

Three weeks after making its debut with a circulation hitting 200,000 copies, YCDTB has not been too successful in luring advertisers. "Formal" advertisements took no space of the 24-page, tabloid sized paper published on 23 October, although it has been a widespread practice to pay for promotional materials placed the way news is reported in mainland media publications. However, unless the publisher is willing to release relevant information, it would be hard to judge if YCDTB would be making any profit.

The free paper is believed to have strong financial backup as it is jointly published and distributed by Guangzhou Daily Press Group (廣州日報報業集團) and Guangzhou Metro Corporation (廣州市地下鐵道總公司).

The former, founded in 1996, is mainland China's first newspaper group, which also owns a variety of publications including newspapers Guangzhou Daily (廣州日報), Information Times (信息時報) and Guangzhou Soccer (足球報) , and monthly Nanfengchang Magazine (南風窗). The latter speaks for itself as a company that operates the Guangzhou subway.

The purpose behind the creation of YCDTB is multi-faceted, according to Chen Jianhua, member of the Standing Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Guangzhou Municipal Committee.

It provides a supplementary type of newspaper to the PRC market and is needed by a special group of people in society, Chen said, adding that "we want the subway newspaper to become a platform for publicizing the party's voice and a bridge communicating the government to the public" and "provide strong media support for Guangzhou's modernization initiative".

With a political mission to accomplish, there is little doubt, YCDTB is born and looks set to sustain despite an apparent lack of advertising income. It is in particular true given that its parent Guangzhou Daily Press Group is a leader of the mainland's media scene, recording a total income of 1.8 billion yuan and total assets valued at 4.9 billion yuan for 2003.

YCDTB may not end up being a liability of the news group. It may defy the destiny of many state-owned enterprises if its reader basis becomes broad enough to attract advertisers. But, like Hong Kong's Metro Daily, it takes time to get mature.

The subways of many leading cities in the world have their free papers. The first one, since established in Europe in 1995, has proliferated to 21 cities in 19 countries with a combined circulation of 7 million.

Printed neatly in colour, YCDTB primarily has three content components - news information, consumer information and the feature page - and therefore every advantage to become popular.

The challenge ahead would be for it to stay away from the uninteresting tone and subject matter long favoured by the Communist Party when promoting government policies. With Xinhua having lately been vested with more power to scrutinize press materials disseminated within the mainland, YCDTB, while being free of charge, is not likely to be free from ideological control.