New York Post to Scale Back Its Sunday Gamble

The New York Post’s Sunday editions, which first appeared on newsstands just 11 weeks ago, will be cut in size and price next month because of a lack of advertising revenue, executives of the newspaper announced.

The Post will reduce the Sunday edition’s price from $1 to 40 cents, the price of the daily paper, and will abandon several supplemental sections beginning June 4, the newspaper’s president, Valerie Salembier, said.

“The advertising support wasn’t there for a million different reasons,” Salembier said.

No employees will be laid off despite the cuts, she said.

The Sunday edition made its debut March 5. At the time, media analysts called the venture a high-risk gamble that could determine the future of the 188-year-old tabloid in the highly competitive metropolitan news market.

The Post spent $25 million to launch the Sunday edition and undertook an aggressive campaign to attract more affluent readers and advertisers.

The Sunday edition’s circulation hovered, however, at just over 300,000 after peaking at about 450,000 when it first hit newsstands, Salembier said.

The revamped Sunday Post will cost the same and look similar to the paper’s daily editions, she said, adding that the 40-cent price is expected to boost circulation “a couple hundred thousand, for sure.”

The lack of advertising support for the pull-out sections--especially the absence of supermarket coupon supplements--caused executives to reconsider their strategy for the Sunday edition, Salembier said.