Going Semiweekly to Boost Circulation, Advertising : Burbank Daily Review Changes Focus

The 80-year-old Burbank Daily Review will cease daily operations in April, change its name and become a twice-a-week newspaper distributed free of charge, its owners announced Wednesday.

The move, rumored for months at the struggling newspaper, is intended to increase circulation fourfold and attract advertisers who have been uninterested in the publication because of its inability to penetrate the Burbank market, newspaper executives said.

The Daily Review is the only local daily newspaper in Burbank, a city of 85,000. It has a circulation of less than 8,000 paid subscribers, by far the lowest circulation in the five-paper Verdugo Newspaper Group chain owned by Ingersoll Publications Co.

“Our experience in California has been that people will pick up and read a good newspaper if you put it on the doorstep,” said Thomas Geyer, president of Ingersoll, which bought the Daily Review and the Glendale News-Press four years ago.

“Increasing the circulation really ought to give the advertisers what they are looking for,” Geyer said. “Not enough papers in California cover the market from an advertising standpoint.”

He predicted that the new publication, to be called the Burbank Leader, will make more money for the privately held company.

Ingersoll, based in Lakeville, Conn., operates the Burbank and Glendale newspapers, the Foothill Leader and the Burbank and Glendale Weekly Reviews as the Verdugo Newspaper Group.

William F. LaMee, publisher of the Verdugo newspapers, said the format changes at the Daily Review will not require staff reductions. Several employees, however, will be transferred from Burbank to the Glendale News-Press and the Foothill Leader, he said. Two of the Daily Review’s four staff writers left the newspaper this month in anticipation of the announcement.

Changes at the paper have been modeled after the Foothill Leader, a twice-a-week newspaper established by Ingersoll several years ago and delivered free to about 35,000 residents in Montrose, La Crescenta, La Canada Flintridge, Tujunga and Sunland.

LaMee said he could not explain why a city as large as Burbank has been unable to support a daily newspaper. “Perhaps we were trying to do too much by being a daily newspaper,” he said. “By channeling our resources into a twice-a-week format, we will better be able to serve our readers and advertisers.”