Madam, - I am responding to a letter in your edition of April 7th from Patrick M. Lyons regarding the Competition Authority and the newspaper industry. Mr Lyons, as a past chairman of the Competition Authority, sets out to defend the decision of successive authorities that indigenous Irish newspapers and Irish editions of English titles do not compete in the same circulation market.
Madam, - I am responding to a letter in your edition of April 7th from Patrick M. Lyons regarding the Competition Authority and the newspaper industry. Mr Lyons, as a past chairman of the Competition Authority, sets out to defend the decision of successive authorities that indigenous Irish newspapers and Irish editions of English titles do not compete in the same circulation market.
The Competition Authority's view that the Irish newspaper market comprises a number of separate and distinct markets is seriously flawed. The indigenous newspaper industry would trenchantly oppose the authority's view as being totally inconsistent with Irish consumer behaviour. The Newspaper Commission Report of 1996 also concurred with the indigenous newspaper industry's view that the market should be defined as one single entity.
In practice, indigenous newspaper titles compete side by side with their English counterparts on the news-stands of Irish retailers each day. Within this unique and highly competitive market the Irish consumer makes less and less distinction between Irish and English titles at the point of purchase.
In the Sunday newspaper market, for example, only four of the 15 newspaper titles in circulation are fully Irish owned and published. The market share of English titles has grown from 36.4 per cent in 1994 to 45 per cent in 2003. We can take little comfort from the daily market either, where English titles have increased share from 25 per cent in 1994 to 34 per cent in 2003. These stark and challenging statistics clearly undermine Mr Lyons's contention that English and Irish titles are not close substitutes.
The long-term strategy of English publishers in Ireland is clearly to replicate their Scottish publishing model, which has irreparably damaged the indigenous Scottish newspaper market. Scottish editions of English newspapers now hold almost 80 per cent of the market. A comparable example in the Irish context was the successive failure of Irish authorities to anticipate the competitive threat posed by BSkyB.
BSkyB's current scale of operations has so radically altered the competitive landscape that it compromises the State's ability to countenance an indigenous digital TV offering.
If the Irish newspaper industry is to avoid a similar fate - and believe me, we are already well down this road - then the Irish authorities must recognise the unique factors at play in the Irish newspaper market. In the interim, the industry will continue to vigorously defend itself from the English invasion, ever mindful of the "doomsday scenario" that has been visited upon our Celtic cousins. - Yours, etc.,
BARRY BRENNAN,
Group Marketing Director,
Independent Newspapers (Ireland),
Middle Abbey Street,
Dublin 1.