XPRESS TO DELIVER FREE NEWS IN BANGKOK

I had lunch with Khun Thanachai, the chairman of Nation Multimedia Group, and his colleagues who run the magazine side of their business whilst in Singapore. I have met Thanachai before and have always found him to be a charming, intelligent and approachable guy. He told me about his plans for what will be Thailand's first free English daily newspaper - details of which were formally announced in Bangkok yesterday.
XPress will launch in March and aims to have 100,000 copies distributed daily through 4,000 selected locations in Bangkok. I have been saying for a long time that Bangkok is a prime place for a free newspaper to work, although I would have thought that a Thai language edition would have been the best route to begin. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens - both with The Nation and its rival The Bangkok Post. Will people stop buying both titles if they get everything they want from a free paper? Perhaps.