A Midlands newspaper entrepreneur is offering estate agents a share of his business in a desperate bid to keep it afloat.
Chris Bullivant sparked a newspaper war earlier this year when he launched the part-free, part paid-for Birmingham Press earlier this year in oppositon to established Trinity Mirror titles in the city.
Trinity hit back by bringing out a free version of the Birmingham Post and distributing it in the same wealthy suburbs that the Presshad been targeting.
Undaunted, Mr Bullivant then opened a new front in the battle by launching an entirely free title, the Birmingham Free Press.
Now the veteran publisher has warned that this title, may disappear unless it gets more backing from advertisers.
He has invited estate agents to a meeting next week to discuss forming a consortium that would own a part of the Free Press, claiming a similar enterprise in the South of England yielded the estate agent partners £2.2m when it was sold.
The publishers’ battle has centred on the lucrative property advertising market in the better-off parts of the city.
Mr Bullivant claims Trinity Mirror has been offering estate agents full page advertisements in its titles for as little as £150, which he says is “an attempt to remove us from the marketplace.”
“We cannot compete with such rates, as they are below the cost of production, and as a small, new business, we cannot continue to sustain the impact that has on our company,” he told West Midlands business website TheBusinessDesk.com.
“A number of my customers have been lured back to Trinity Mirror, and if that continues, we’ll have to close.”
The Free Press is edited by Pam Thomas, a former editor of the Solihull News and the Solihull Times.
The Press, which is unaffected by Mr Bullivant’s proposal, continues to be edited by Tony Lennox, the former editorial director of Trinity Mirror’s Midlands weeklies.
Mr Bullivant told TheBusinessDesk he was “in a dialogue” with Trinity Mirror subsidiary BPM Media, which publishes the Post and its sister titles, over its pricing policy.
A spokesperson for Trinity Mirror said: “We don’t engage in anti-competitive practice.”
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Thats how business works, I guess this freebie would have contributed to the Post’s problems. What goes around comes around.
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As expected really. Will be interesting to see if the estate agents stump up the cash – I doubt it somehow. The Business Desk also has a blog on trying to find out who’s actually editing this paper currently. It was formerBPM Media weeklies supremo Tony Lennox, but he would appear to be no more. Apparently the new editor is a ‘she’ who wishes to remain nameless.
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@Hengist Pod: Tony Lennox is still editor of The Birmingham Press. One would assume that the same person would edit the 2 titles but clearly some newspaper publishers are way more radical than we give them credit for!!
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If anyone ever read the Birmingham Press then they would become immediately aware of the reasons behind its imminent demise.
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Good luck! Good to see that they are not giving in to the big boys…http://www.estateagents123.com
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Bit rich to be complaining about discounted ads when the Press has been giving them away for free, don’t you think?
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We’ve now managed to clear up the ‘mystery’ of who is editing the two titles and this has been added to the story, but as To Clarify correctly states, Tony Lennox is indeed alive and kicking!
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I’m sure the estate agents would love to align themselves with a peddler of poor journalism! When will Mr Bullivant realise that his publications are synonymous with exploiting very poorly paid staff and freelances as well as producing publications stuffed full of rehashed press releases. Then again, maybe the estate agents will find that sort of business model attractive in order to make themselves a fast buck. They probably deserve each other!
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When are newspaper owners going to learn that the 50 year old revenue model is dead in the water. Estate agents? They’ve got no money and get a better response from the web (Rightmove, etc). Newspapers that rely on jobs, motors & property for their revenue will soon be dead in the water.
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I was the Chairman of the Estate Agents consortium in Partnership with Chris Bullivant Snr and have been an agent for 35 plus years. We did indeed sell out for a very significant sum and the consortium was established because the local paper at the time attempted to put rates up by 300%. I would strongly recommend that the agents in Birmingham listen very carefully to Chris Bullivant as throughout our dealings with him he proved to be nothing less than the complete gentleman and was true to his word in all of our dealings with him. If the agents in your area stop and think and take a slightly longer term view and enter into a deal with Bullivant Snr then you will not regret it.
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It has always been a standard business practice of Chris Bullivant to have the Estate Agents on the board. When he set up the Rugby Observer in 1991, there were seven Rugby Estate Agents with shares in the newspaper, and they rotated the front page in the property supplement.
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