Co-sponsors agree to subsidize renewals

The Tri-Parish Times & BusinessNews has been very blessed over its 12-year history.

Our publication has received great support from the advertising community, allowing us to continue providing quality local news and information in print and online. We have also received great support from subscribers like you.

A newspaper has one primary asset in which advertisers invest – our readers. While these readers provide most newspapers with all of their subscription revenue, without advertisers a newspaper could not survive.

Thus is the paradox.

Newspapers need to increase the number of subscribers to provide greater benefit to the advertisers, but they also want subscription revenue to offset the high cost of printing and distributing the product.

Like every other business, the subscription business flows along a supply and demand curve. The higher the subscription price, the lower the demand.

We realized this almost three years ago, and devised a way to bend the supply and demand curve to quickly grow circulation while preserving revenue.

We partnered with select co-sponsors who agreed to pay for up to 3,000 three-year subscriptions every 12 months. These complimentary, paid subscriptions were then offered to new subscribers at no cost to them.

The result was 6,000 new subscribers being added to the Tri-Parish Times’ family.

Last week, nearly 12,000 copies of the Tri-Parish Times were distributed to businesses and households in the Tri-parish area – making our publication the second most circulated newspaper in Terrebonne, Lafourche and St. Mary parishes. Our goal is to be the highest circulated newspaper in the market by the end of 2009.

Now begins stage two of our subscription drive.

Tri-Parish Times has inked an agreement with Trapp Chevrolet and Terrebonne General Medical Center to continue paying for 3,000 additional three-year subscriptions over the next year to new subscribers, while also paying a subsidy to reduce the renewal price for current subscribers.

As of this week, a three-year renewal subscription to Tri-Parish Times has been reduced to only $30. This subsidized renewal is 75 percent less than the Tri-Parish Times’ cover price and only 19 cents a week.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Trapp Chevrolet and Terrebonne General Medical Center, as well as all the advertisers in our paper who continue to help pay for the reporters, graphic artists and customer service representatives who create our newspaper.

The Tri-Parish Times & BusinessNews is quickly growing into the most read newspaper in the Tri-parish area, and it is all because of our customers – including you.