Several newsagents complained to a well-known radio personality about the HWT T2020 plan. So what Derryn Hinch did was interview Eugene Ahern from Nextra Bulleen Plaza newsagency in Melbourne on his drive program about the HWT consolidation program. I took the relevant bit which you can hear if you click here.

What will be absorbing today is that HWT is invited and expected to respond today on 3AW on their T2020 plan, it should make for interesting listening to anyone in the industry.

Like everyone in the newsagency industry, I went to look at the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures.

Of course, the main one that interests me is the newspapers, and the same patterns I reported earlier on a previous ABC audit showed up again. The national newspapers did increase in circulation, but the overall rate of fall in newspaper circulation is less than almost everywhere else in the Western world, and magazines are a real source of concern.

The results show an overall loss of about 1% in newspaper circulation for the last quarter of 2007 (October to December). Of concern is that this period included a federal election, which should have increased sales. So, like before, the newspaper market appears to be static.

Looking at them individually, it appeared that many News Limited publications took a hammering, although others like The West Australian also went down. That, of course, is more of an issue to the publishers, not us.