More cuts to come from News International….

We recently were visited by reps from News International, including senior picture desk staff and group managment.  Apparently this was part of a number of visits to key agencies in the UK,  including us,  North News, INS and a few others.

In a nutshell it appears that editorial budgets are going to be squeezed even more to help pay for the new colour presses which are coming on line at Wapping.

It would appear that the first thing that is being cut will be the Suns space rates.  Considering the very poor fees that they pay for commisions and the already considerable difficulties that are experienced with extracting payment from them,  This is going to make a already unnattractive package from that paper even more so.   The Suns space rates are one of the main incentives for agencies to produce speculative work,  and I suspect that if these are cut,  then this will have a substantial impact on the amount of this sort of material being produced. 

The good news that was delivered was that NI now recognises that they must pay for online useages.  However the rate quoted,  at £10 per useage,  clearly is a non-starter and will not even cover the cost of invoicing.

Apparently James Murdoch,  who has now taken over the newspapers in London,  is keen to have a strong editorial content,  quite how he thinks he is going to fill the papers with high quality material without actually paying for it,  is another matter.

I find it astonishing that NI will invest a quoted £600 million on new presses to allow for high quality colour to be reproduced throughout the run,  and then cut the budget for one of the primary things that this will benefit, the photography.    If they want to produce higher quality and colour to attract advertising,  then they are gong to have to make those pages attractive,  and crap pictures are not going to help.

Like anything, you get what you pay for.  As I have previously stated on these pages,  the Nationals are simply out of touch with reality.  They say they want to have a good supplier base,  but they wont actually pay the sort of fees that are needed to ensure one exists.   Resources and suppliers are rapidly moving elsewhere,   something which I hope that NI have noted from their visits.