My most recent blog was based on the circulation results of ‘going weekly’, with many comments pointing out the imperfectness of comparing old daily with new weekly sales.

Publishers will continue to claim the ‘rises’, and cynics will always see the flaws, so that debate will doubtlessly rumble on.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the wider economics of a small, struggling daily considering ‘going weekly’.

On the table below, I’ve assumed that for every £100 of revenue coming in to the daily paper, £55 comes from advertising and £45 from cover price.

P&L            Daily       Weekly

Adverts:       +£55       +£45

Cover price:  +£45       +£20

Staff:            -£30        -£20

Paper:          -£30        -£15

Print:            -£20        -£5

Transport:     -£15        -£5

Profit:            +£5        +£20

Margin:         5pc        31pc

The revenue split is based on what used to be the regional equation – two-thirds ads, one-third cover price – now increasingly near to equal according to what many editors are telling me, as advertising tumbles but cover price remains more or less static, thanks to price increases offsetting sales declines.

The costs are, to be honest, based on what just one editor told me was his struggling daily heading for the red, income barely covering outgoings, and so I’ve generously assumed a 5pc profit margin.

The cost splits of what the remaining £95 is then spent on is based on part memory and a bit of a guess: £30 on paper, £30 on staff, £20 on printing and £15 on transport, leaving £5 out of the £100 revenue as profit.

Yes, I know, it’s crude, isn’t it? But bear with me.

Now as a weekly, even if you more than double the cover price and sales ‘rise’, you’re still going to lose more than half the £45 you were getting before, so let’s say this figure reduces to £20.

Advertising, apparently, does not suffer too badly – most clients were only advertising once or twice a week anyway, and some are spending more because they see a bumper-sized paper as an attractive package.

But let’s say it does reduce – so I’ve taken a tenner off that revenue, reducing it to £45, meaning that total revenues have, in an instant, been slashed to £65 by going weekly.

Then there’s the revised costs, and here it really does get blunt, but let’s say a third of staff go – that’s in editorial and advertising – so that cost is now down from £30 to £20.

The cost of paper is then halved from £30 to £15 – based on only one paper but three times the pagination; and transport, in terms of vans, fuel and drivers, is only a third of what it was – down from £15 to £5.

What does this basic maths equal? The good news is that a paper that was steadily heading for losses has suddenly transformed its profitability from a fiver to £20, increasing its margin to more than 30pc.

Inevitably, there will be other fixed costs, like buildings, and these will vary from centre to centre, but even when these are added to the equation the new margin on the above model is still likely to be 25pc-plus.

The bad news is that in doing this, many people have been made redundant, and readers only have a weekly rather than a daily publication.

But going back to the circulation ‘rises’ claimed in my last blog, the new weekly now has a sales figure that owners argue is better, and while revenues have dropped the profit appears to be far more sustainable.

The overall result? A paper that might have closed – leading to far more job losses and no service for locals – is now still going, extending its life and existence in a new form, still paying wages to many staff and still serving readers.

Now, I don’t want to come across as too much of a daily-to-weekly evangelist, and if the above model is not where many small dailies see themselves then they should confidently maintain their daily operations, and all strength to them.

Indeed, some are tweaking elements of the maths, like recent cover price rises of up to 50pc, and if this works for them, that’s good news.

But if the basic sum I’ve constructed is the experience of some struggling titles – and I think that might well be the case – then I repeat what I said last week: the industry will see at least another three conversions this year.

Because faced with the option of weekly or nothing, what would you choose?

Next week: Dyson at Large reviews a new weekly, and compares it with when it was a daily.