News Australia (News Limited) said it will restructure the future distribution and retail contracts with newsagents in a bid to improve profits.
The restructure, which comes after two years of reviews, will start in south Brisbane where there plans to consolidate 56 newsagent territories in South Brisbane into three. The restructure in the other states will follow in early 2013 where in NSW and ACT, about 900 current distribution territories could in theory be consolidated to under 40 larger territories.
In the last five years, over 20 per cent of Queensland newsagents have terminated their distribution contracts with News Queensland; as a result they were unable to conduct their daily distributions due to the lack of commercial viability.
Chiang Lim, Newsagents Association of NSW & ACT (NANA) CEO, said the changes will mean newsagents will be invited to apply for new contracts to distribute on average 10,000 copies per day instead of delivering as few as 19 or typically 500 or even up to 1,000 newspapers every day.
"The Newsagents Association of NSW & ACT (NANA) agrees in principle that the broad outline of News Australia's proposals can introduce profitability and longer term sustainability for the Newsagents who are willing and able to participate. However, we also recognise that there will be a number of Newsagents who may become casualties of change," he said.
NANA and other associations are continuing discussions with News Australia to answer a growing number of issues and questions on behalf of Newsagents following the proposals to restructure Newsagents.
"Virtually all NSW and ACT Newsagents are making financial losses under the existing distribution contracts. So while these fundamental structural and contractual changes proposed by News Australia are long overdue, newsagents will need a lot of assistance to transition to this unfamiliar new world," Lim said.