Galway Voice

galvianlord

Anybody seen the new paper Galway Voice. Think it goes out on Mondays. Looks pretty good but the €1.70 price tag may a bit steep? Competing as it does with the freesheet Galway First. Six papers in Galway now for five days!

smackbunnybaby

i saw there is a kildare voice as well.
some very rich fella is bankrolling the whole thing i heard.

it would want to be a savage publication to try and compete with the free papers here, who in my opinion convey most of the news very well.

downthewest

There is another one coming before Christmas. A Galway Post. It seems they are part of a whole chain of papers they are starting 29. newsagent told me that they have ten already in kilkenny athlone kildare, laois and other places.
The voice is good and the magazine is class. They've picked the worst day to come out though. Monday is a dead day for buying papers and especially when there is a free one already. heard they're going to move it to Tuesday or Friday when they get a printer sorted. Sport is good though. Lots of pictures. Even have a dogs page. The news is all old stuff though.:p

LadyMayBelle

Not another one. More costly weight for the recycling bin! why on earth..same news, same "having a good night in some sh*t pub" pictures...I read the advertiser and the ent guide in the Galway Independent, but other than that..

Robbo

smackbunnybaby wrote: »

it would want to be a savage publication to try and compete with the free papers here, who in my opinion convey most of the news very well.

You can't be serious about the freesheets conveying the news very well. Maybe when it was just the Advertiser but these days they're mainly ads, press releases and the dichotomy of court reports castigating drunks beside a page of "Pictured enjoying a night in AnySuperpub....".

The only paper that is anyway serious about news is the Tribune, even the Sentinel has dumbed down and sexed up.

SimpleSam06

LadyPennyworth wrote: »

Not another one. More costly weight for the recycling bin! why on earth..same news, same "having a good night in some sh*t pub" pictures...I read the advertiser and the ent guide in the Galway Independent, but other than that..

Haha, I think they are great, I don't even bother reading them, I just use them to light the fire. I hope they bring out a couple more, we run a bit short over the weekend.

Zzippy

LadyPennyworth wrote: »

Not another one. More costly weight for the recycling bin! why on earth..same news, same "having a good night in some sh*t pub" pictures...I read the advertiser and the ent guide in the Galway Independent, but other than that..

The recycling bin is free

po0k

But at what cost the tears of Gaia?

Robbo

SyxPak wrote: »

But at what cost the tears of Gaia?

I believe you can easily convert an older diesel engine to run on the tears of Gaia.

ErnieBert

galvianlord wrote: »

Anybody seen the new paper Galway Voice. Think it goes out on Mondays. Looks pretty good but the €1.70 price tag may a bit steep? Competing as it does with the freesheet Galway First. Six papers in Galway now for five days!

I got a copy of it this week and it's pure muck. I had been half looking out for it over the last few days but I didn't see it in any of the usual haunts in town (Easons, Spar, O'Briens etc) but I got one in Joyces Knocknacarra yesterday. Lots of photos and, credit where it's due, a hell of a lot of sport but after that, it dies.

Thank God for the freebies.

LadyMayBelle

Galwayguy99 wrote: »

The recycling bin is free

Mine isnt free! 5c per kilo for it, plus the 159euro yearly charge! Got it last week tho out of interest, not bad, but its a pity the magazine isnt really Galway based, loadsa all-ireland articles, like they release it in every county but with a few pages exclusively region oreintated..

gaeilgegrinds

I think it's pure trash, won't buy it again.

ErnieBert

gaeilgegrinds wrote: »

I think it's pure trash, won't buy it again.

The Galway First is a bit wishy washy too. I will stick with the Sentinel, Advertiser and City Trib.

I'm a bit of a traditionalist.

damalo

You only need to flick through the advertiser/independant/first to see the amount of ads taken out by companies in Galway. Obviously there's money to be made hence the influx of papers (in some cases 2 papers from same company).

SimpleSam06

damalo wrote: »

You only need to flick through the advertiser/independant/first to see the amount of ads taken out by companies in Galway. Obviously there's money to be made hence the influx of papers (in some cases 2 papers from same company).

Its especially interesting to watch them trying to corner markets. The Advertiser and Galway First are both run by the same group, but First is an attempt to get into the trashy tabloid market (this weeks headline, Bat out of Cell, where a musician who used to play with meatloaf avoided a sentence for drunk driving - this is front page news).

Of course they are missing the point that tabloids need to have tits in them to pull the demographic.

henrydownstairs

Or maybe just tits like us reading them. Like it or love it, we just can't get enough papers, but the voice is a step too far. Newsagents are losing their holes over it tho, because everyone thinks it's free. They're just taking a few off the top of the massive piles of them and walking out the door without paying the 1.70 it costs. People in Galway get all they need from free media radio, adv/indo/first/ and arent used to paying for it. Thats why the sentinel had a revamp to combat the voice but it's still black and white inside on some pages. I heard the voice lost 50K a week. Niall mellon is behind it the buy who builds houses in cape town. You would build a lot of houses for that every week. they had 11 journos working on the first one and they're all moving soon back to the other papers where they came from. Still the Daniel O Donell CD is rocking.
I'd say the free papers arent short of a bob. that place where the advretister is based must be worth 20 million and they have four other offices in the city as well.

manonthestreet

Very interesting discussion, especially to a bean counter like myself. I have to take issue with some of the things you said Henry, because all of the free papers cannot be making buckets of money. To prove my point I've just checked the Companies Registration Office. The Advertiser accounts are not there, but we can take it as read that they're doing very well, with their papers being 180 pages a week almost and the same in all of the other ones. The Tribune have old money so are prob very well off as well, but their customer base is strictly Galway, unlike the Advertiser who are spread across the country. The Voice has its base in Kilkenny but seems to be on a mission to lose money. The question is whose money. None of the local paper groups would be so stupid as to pour money down the drain like they are doing. You are right, it would cost about 40k a week to print and distribute that and they are not selling more than a few hundred. The Galway Independent figures are in the CRO and they have not had a good time either, even though they are on the go for five or six years now. They made a profit last year of about 2,500 a week which is not great and is also not considering accumulated losses of about 1.5 million up to then. Their papers in Cork and Limerick lost 600K and 700K respectively last year which adds another 1.3 onto the 1.5 and brings losses closer to 3million. They must have been giving away ads very cheaply which is the fatal mistake in the business they are in. Very very poor performance and with next year predicted to be ahard one, they will feel the pinch. I believe they are looking for investors but these figures are not encouraging. Galway Bay Fm makes about a million euro profit a year and is very solid in its market, despite the odd slippage that all the stations suffered recently and the new Iradio has not set up yet but it is hoping to take about 3 per cent of the market (according to the BCI), so at best in a few year's time, it will have just a fraction of the GBFM audience. So that's my considered analysis of the Galway media market. If anyone has any issue with this, please post.

ErnieBert

manonthestreet wrote: »

If anyone has any issue with this, please post.

Is that an intended or unintended pun?:D

There is also another paper coming out in the next few weeks - I believe it is called the Galway Post - brought out by the same company as the Limerick Post.

manonthestreet

sorry erbert, bad pun it was too. You mention the post. Thats the paper owned by River Media who are also setting up a whole ream of new papers, The Voice group are aiming for 29. the post want to do about 20, but their entire circulation will be just about 2,000 per issue, so the entire group could have a smaller circulation than any one of the freesheets we have here in Galway. Galway is unique in having successful freesheets, although the Galway Indo model is not exactly going as well as it should. The flaw here seems to be lots of ads but little revenue, which suggests that pages are being given away for just a few hundred euro a page. It might be a ploy to undercut the opposition a la Ryanair, but Ryanair earned revenue elsewhere. However, Galway people should not be bitching about its media. IN my home county, the papers are maybe like the tribune (establishd, credible but dull)and enjoy a monopoly. The free papers would be welcome in my county as they offer access to the media, colour and choice. And cheaper advertising. For all the criticism of the free papers in Galway, they are massively popular and have a readership in Galway of maybe seven times the paid for papers, so they must be hitting a button somewhere. The new paid fors entering Galway will find it hard but they will place more pressure on the Tribune than on the frees. sorry i dont have a pun to end this.last one must have been a fluke

henrydownstairs

I see the tribune is coming out earlier in the morning now. Is it true that they are looking to print the paper out of town. I heard this from a fella who works in a printworks elsewhere. what would this mean for the printworks, They have been here for generations. As a kid I used to go in there with my dad and get ends of rolls of paper for drawing on. It would be a pity if they shut this down.

manonthestreet

I doubt if this is true Henry. It would mean laying off staff at the tribune printworks and no matter how you sell it, job losses would look desperate for them at a time when new papers are coming in. The Western People in Ballina alienated a lot of people when it moved its printing from Ballina to Cork. The Tribune would not like to see this happen, even though it would mean thye could print more colour and not look very dated as it does. The advertiser is printed in Dublin and the Indo in the Midlands somewhere. Dont know where the voice is printed.

Panthro

i think its the height of madness, free papers monday,wedneesday,thursday, buy the sentinal/city tribune, its not as if theres much of an opening there for yet another newspaper.
galway waste management must be fuming!