Industry

The Paper Chase

• Byline:OSCAR CHUNG
• Publication Date:06/01/2006

Electronic media and the Apple Daily are hot on the heels of Taiwan's older Chinese-language newspapers.

"One bite, and you'll be addicted." The catchphrase accompanied images of a famous Hong Kong actress lying seductively in a sea of red apples, with her naked body partially covered by the forbidden fruit. These ads, heralding the arrival of a Taiwanese version of the Apple Daily, a newspaper published by Hong Kong-based Next Media, flooded the market in early 2003, promising a juicy new competitor in Taiwan's newspaper market. The inroads made by the Apple Daily presented local newspapers--already suffering from sagging sales and competition from broadcast and electronic media--with an unwelcome change in the media landscape.

Readers were given a taste of the Hong Kong publisher's racy style when Next Magazine, a weekly publication of Next Media, arrived in Taiwan two years earlier. The magazine was condemned for its saucy style and lurid coverage by nearly everyone--and nearly everyone read it. The same critical barrages are often leveled at the Apple Daily, which titillates with images of nudity and bloodshed. "When we first entered the local market, the atmosphere was pretty hostile," says Tu Nien-chung, the paper's publisher. "I don't deny that the Apple Daily is sort of sensational, but this is by no means the main part of the paper."

Indeed, the Apple Daily has exploited a gap in the market, and it has been praised for shaking up a staid newspaper environment. According to a survey by ACNielsen, which polled 7,500 people between the ages of 12 and 60, the Apple Daily tied the Liberty Times as Taiwan's most widely read newspaper last year. "I can't say we're where we want to be yet, but we've gained a foothold," says Tu rather modestly. The Apple Daily presently sells approximately 480,000 copies per day.

Political Fatigue

The meteoric rise of the Apple Daily is just the latest twist in a changing newspaper environment. Changes have generally followed political shifts. Before January 1988, a ban on the registration of new newspapers restricted the media to publications that usually kept criticism to a level acceptable to the government. The China Times and the United Daily News towered over the market. In the same year the ban was dropped, the launch of the Liberty Times provided an outlet for long-stifled political voices. The Liberty Times joined the two other stalwarts to form the "big three" dailies of Taiwan, which remained largely unchallenged until the arrival of the Apple Daily.

Yang Chih-hung, dean of the School of Communications at Ming Chuan University, thinks that prior to the arrival of the Apple Daily the playing field was already kind of crowded, as far as general-interest papers were concerned. So how did the newcomer attract so many readers so quickly?

"The Apple Daily has not only wooed customers from its rivals, but has also drawn the attention of people who don't typically read newspapers," says Yang. Standing apart from its major competitors, the Apple Daily filled a niche by focusing less on political news and publishing more stories on bread-and-butter issues, entertainment and consumer concerns. The other three newspapers, he points out, have their political baggage. "Their owners look at the papers as vehicles for conveying their thoughts on politics and society, but the Apple Daily is purely market oriented," he says. "It doesn't promote a particular political ideology."

Tony Liu, former president of the Association of Taiwan Journalists, cites the paper's real estate section as a good example. "It has all the details about a property but also includes photos of the interiors, making it more reader friendly than other listings," he says. "No other papers do this so well."

If the listings are useful to consumers, much of the celebrity news and society tidbits are intended to create a buzz. The paper sometimes delves into areas that local papers might shy away from. "Because the boss, Jimmy Lai, is from Hong Kong, he isn't beholden to anyone in Taiwan, so the paper has more freedom to report scandals no matter who is involved," says Yang.

This kind of news is also highly suited to the Apple Daily's liberal use of photos. "It's like TV," says Yang. "If there are no images, there's no news." In contrast with other papers, the Apple Daily often runs stories with photos and graphics taking center stage, accompanied by comparatively brief textual descriptions. Even the headlines are written in larger type so that it is hard for people to ignore the Apple Daily when it is placed with other papers at newsstands and convenience stores. According to the paper's own market research, people spend on average only 30 to 60 minutes a day reading newspapers, and so the paper has adopted a format better suited for quick browsing.

The paper's Hong Kong connection apparently gives it an edge over its competitors in other ways too. While the vast majority of its employees are Taiwanese, the paper employs designers from Hong Kong to ensure a look different from local papers. The paper has also set up a breaking-news center, the first of its kind on the island, which was modeled after the one in Hong Kong, where the news cycle seems to run on a faster clock. "We've got people cruising around major cities day and night," says Tu. "I don't want to embarrass the police, but sometimes we get to the scene even before they do."

Today, the big three have become the big four, with the Liberty Times and the Apple Daily competing for the top place. According to Yang, the Apple Daily probably outshines even the Liberty Times in actual sales because the vast majority of its copies are sold in retail outlets, like convenience stores, whereas others rely more on subscriptions. "As a subscriber, you may pay for two months and get one month free. But there's usually no discount when you buy a newspaper retail," he says.

The Death of the Late Edition

Since competition among the four giants remains fierce, some smaller dailies have shrunk in circulation or folded. A notable case is the demise in October 2005 of the China Times Express , an evening paper published by the China Times Group, which also owns the China Times. Today, the United Evening News is the sole surviving evening edition on the island. In February, Great Daily News, a special-interest paper established in 1990 that focused on entertainment news, stopped printing as well.

The rapid rise of the Apple Daily certainly has had an impact on the fate of the evening editions. "But the growth of electronic media in recent years has taken a more serious toll on Taiwan's papers in general," says Tony Liu.

The rise and fall of Taiwan's evening papers, in fact, is partly the result of changes in the way information is delivered to investors. Both the United Evening News and the China Times Express sprang up in the late 1980s when Taiwan's stock market was booming. Both featured market information and targeted investors in their marketing campaigns. In the 1990s, electronic media and the Internet became alternate sources for stock quotes and other financial information. "People just stayed at home and listened to stock analysts on TV," says Liu. "Why bother buying an evening paper?"

The deathblow was dealt when the closing time of the stock market was extended from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in January 2001. As a result, the evening papers had to publish later to include the closing figures. The change caused many to stop reading the evening papers. Investors simply got market news earlier elsewhere.

Wired Papers

With the writing on the wall, the daily newspapers began adopting new strategies so as not to be overshadowed by other media. Although the China Times Group stopped printing the China Times Express, for example, the company plunged into broadcasting. After buying CTI TV in 2002, within two months of China Times Express's demise, the company invested in the Broadcasting Corporation of China, the China Television Co. and the Central Motion Picture Corp., which were being sold by the Kuomintang, Taiwan's chief opposition party. "The challenge posed by other forms of media is actually a global issue, but it is bigger for Taiwan's newspapers," says Lin Sheng-fen, director of the China Times.

The reason, according to Lin, is the high cable TV penetration rate (over 80 percent), which enables news consumers to access several TV channels round the clock. The big four have also gone online to prevent Internet sites from luring away readers. Today, all four allow free access to their online editions. According to ACNielsen, over the past 15 years, newspaper readers in Taiwan have dropped from 76 percent of adults in 1991 to 50 percent in 2005.

To hold a share of the shrinking readership, newspapers have been developing their own specialties. The Liberty Times, for example, attempts to present readers with more upbeat copy, according to its editor-in-chief Roger Chen. "Other papers seem to be reporting too much negative news about Taiwan," he says. "We'll keep covering the positive side of Taiwan and reporting the success stories of ordinary people."

Another strategy is to attract readers through supplements. Since September 2004, the United Daily News has published an eight-page supplement every Monday with stories from the New York Times in English and selectively in Chinese translation. According to the newspaper, the supplement is quite popular among students and English-language learners.

The China Times has adopted a different strategy, according to Lin Sheng-fen. It is positioning itself as the paper of record in Taiwan by providing in-depth analysis and extensive coverage of national and international events. The company is also diversifying. Inspired by the investment direction of TheYomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest paper, it opened the China Times Travel Service in 1999, which provides cultural and other tours.

Although each of the big four papers is shooting for a different readership, the Apple Daily has had some impact on reportage in Taiwan, according to Tony Liu. Taiwan's media, both print and electronic, he says, have begun to report more inside stories with gossipy content since the arrival of the Apple Daily .

Ming Chuan University's Yang Chih-hung also sees changes in the direction of the papers caused by competition from the Apple Daily. "Don't you think that stories about consumers' rights are featured on front pages more often than before?" he asks.

Nonetheless, the big four all retain distinct personalities and generally different readers. Tony Liu believes that this is what will keep them relevant. "It's impossible and unwise to imitate the Apple Daily," he says. "You'd get stuck in the middle of nowhere, lose your own style and look like an imitator. You can open a McDonald's or a posh restaurant. It's just about how you position the paper."