Sydney-based APN News & Media, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, will be Australia's first regional publisher to introduce metered paywalls. Photo / supplied
Sydney-based APN News & Media, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, will be Australia's first regional publisher to introduce metered paywalls. Photo / supplied
APN News & Media, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, will launch digital subscriptions for its Queensland-based daily regional newspapers during the second half of this year.
The company said it would be Australia's first regional publisher to introduce metered paywalls.
Readers will be able to access a certain number of free articles each month before a subscription is required.
"Increasingly we're seeing that in international markets consumers are prepared to pay for quality content, not just on news media sites but on all platforms," Miller said. "In regional markets in particular there are very few, if any, competitors to providing specialised regional content. That applies in New Zealand as much as Australia."
APN's 12 Queensland dailies include the Sunshine Coast Daily and the Toowoomba Chronicle.
Miller said the company wasn't releasing a specific timetable for the introduction of digital subscriptions, but there would be a "staggered roll-out".
"We firmly believe the introduction of a content-driven metered subscription model to our regional audiences will grow news media revenues over time, as has been demonstrated in international markets."
Chief executive Michael Miller says quality content should be paid for. Photo / Dean Purcell
The 14.99 per cent stake Rupert Murdoch's News Corp took in APN in March had not influenced the Australian subscription plans, he said.
Murdoch is a leading proponent of paywalls, having introduced them on a number of his titles including the Times in Britain and Australia's Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph.
In a trading update also released today, APN said group revenue in the financial year-to-date was 6 per cent ahead of the previous year, including the impact of the recent purchase of Perth radio station 96FM.
Revenue at NZME, the company's New Zealand division whose brands also include NewstalkZB and daily deal website GrabOne, was 2 per cent higher in the year-to-date, on a like-for-like and constant currency basis, compared with the same period a year earlier.
APN said NZME - which was formed last year and combined APN's New Zealand publishing and radio assets, as well as GrabOne - was reaping benefits from that integration through expanded audience share and revenue.
"Digital revenues are up more than 50 per cent year-to-date, with online revenue market share increasing from 16 per cent to 20 per cent," the firm said. "The co-location of the three businesses [into a new building on Auckland's Victoria St West] will be completed by February 2016, which will enable the full benefits of integration to begin to be realised."
Miller said the possibility of floating NZME as a separate business on the New Zealand stock exchange would be reviewed by the board in February.
APN said its outdoor advertising business, Adshel, would begin digitising 35 of its most prominent Auckland sites next month.
The company is also planning to introduce more small-format digital panels in Australia.
