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Sunday, July 27, 2008

NATION'S BRINGS BACK SUNDAY EDITION

It appears The Nation has reversed its decision earlier this year to stop publishing on a Sunday. I was given a free copy of the 'new' The Sunday Nation today and it's remarkably similar to Daily Xpress - identical in every way except the masthead and the 25 baht price tag. It's the same size, same pagination, uses the same fonts and page layouts and even has 'Daily Xpress is published ..." in the flannel panel on page two, so it's basically a Sunday edition of Daily Xpress that will be re-branded at The Sunday Nation and sold for 25 baht.
What on earth is going on at Nation Multimedia Group? The killed off the Sunday edition five months ago, they killed off weekend edition of Daily Xpress within the last two weeks and now they've resurrected a Sunday edition of The Nation is Daily Xpress colours and format. They cannot make a success of Daily Xpress when it's free so why do they think the public will pay 25 baht for exactly the same product?

7 comments:

Anonymous 8:50 PM  

Yes, this might rank as THE stupidest decision yet made by Nation Group. I bet many sellers are still giving it away, perhaps believing that the Nation couldn't possibly think that they could charge for what was and what should be a free product.

Anonymous 10:00 PM  

the nation is trimming its staff. its subdesk has been forced to go for ER (early retirement). the nation will sub-contract subbing to a company which will be owned by the subdesk boss and the top layout artist. some of the nation journalists (those on the deadwood list) have been forced to take ER. one or two of them will sue the nation for forcing them to go for early retirment. plus the pay cut that i mentioned a week or two ago. the nation has been primed up for ....

(c) 2016 Written by Andrew Batt 6:39 AM  

Cardinal makes a good point - and yes, I got my 25 baht copy for free. By all means reintroduce it, but not as a clone of Daily Xpress.

Insider, primed for .. ? That's the big question. Cutting costs in order to make it more attractive to a new buyer, perhaps?

Anonymous 8:51 AM  

I could think of another English-language paper which could usefully do away with a lot of dead wood.

Anonymous 7:26 PM  

bangkok bungle, you filled in the blanks correctly. yes, primed for a sale.

(c) 2016 Written by Andrew Batt 10:46 PM  

Bungle? ;-) Okay, I know I make some mistakes from time to time but ...

Anonymous 10:43 AM  

dear bangkok bugle, i apologise. i bungled. it shoud be BUGLE and BUNGLE.

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