Overview

During the past years there has been a steady concentration of free regional newspapers within large publishing groups what resulted in an improved print quality and editorial content and we observe an evolution of free regional newspapers being a Push to a Pull media; more and more titles are no longer distributed door-to-door, but are put to disposal in busy places as gas stations, public buildings, stores and parking places.

Furthermore we can notice that free regional newspapers are more and more positioned as “local” newspapers, not only as to size (tabloid), but also as to lay-out and content.

In January 2013 the landscape of the free regional newspapers underwent a major change: Corelio replaced Passe Partout, one of the three major players, by the free editorial quality magazines Rondom (Flanders) and Proximag (Wallonia and Brussels).

Advantages of the free regional newspapers:

• regional basis: limits the “waste”
• fairly large reach
• promotional context
• high information volume possible

Disadvantages of the free regional newspapers:

• limited editorial context
• low reader involvement