ACM SWITCHES TO SATURDAY-ONLY PRINT

The country’s biggest regional newspaper publisher, Australian Community Media (ACM), is switching all its remaining print titles to Saturday-only printing.

The move to one printed edition a week will take place over the next seven years, as the company focuses on a digital future.

ACM publishes 65 newspapers, the majority in New South Wales, with major titles including the Canberra Times, the Newcastle Herald and the Illawarra Mercury, all of which will move to Saturday only in print, but daily in the digital online version.

Other six-day-a-week newspapers that will become Saturday-only include the Albury Border Mail, Bendigo Advertiser and Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser.

Some newspapers will move to Saturday-only printing immediately, including the Dubbo Daily Liberal, the Bathurst Western Advocate, the Port Macquarie News, and the Central Western Daily.

When ACM bought the regional newspaper portfolio from Fairfax it also inherited nine print sites, most of which it has closed down and sold off, as it followed an outsource contract printing strategy.

The old Launceston print facility, which closed last year and has remained silent ever since, has just been sold, the 2,600sqm site fetching $3.5m.

The dramatic unravelling of the printed newspaper market has come as a result of the arrival of the smartphone 15 years ago, the impact of Facebook and Google on advertising, and the refusal of Facebook owner Meta to renew its $200m-a-year deal with local newspaper publishers.