Good Thinking!. However, it may be more subtle than you think.If the Ealing Gazette and Ealing Leader are indeed selling pages to Ealing Council at £3,500 discounted by say twenty per cent there is a very strong chance that Ealing Council may not be getting good value. As I said a rate card rate page would be an early right hand page with facing editorial matter. However, an early right hand page with facing adverts with no editorial matter would be about a third less. A right page with facing editorial matter after the half way point in the publication would again be about a third less. An early left hand page with facing editorial matter would probably cost ten to twenty per cent less thanrate card and if it had facing adverts only it would probably go for half of rate card.Mono adverts (no colour) cost a third or half of colour ads.This really is a complex business and requires silled media buyers to get the best value for the organisation.What Ealing Council needs to look out for is, say, the Events Team booking thirty pages at twenty per cent off with say twenty pages in bad positions at the back of Ealing Gazette and Ealing Leader (they do sell cross publication packages). Then Ealing Council is paying around £87,000, or about £2,900 per page for late left hands that would normally sell for £1,000 each leaving £87,000 less £29,000, or £58,000 to spend (from the Ealing Gazettes/Leader to spend withng the package) on ten early pages, inside front covers etc. This game may beplayed many ways however to get to the bottom of how this amazing feat of buying the front cover, back cover, inside front and back has been achieved I suspect is going to require a very good accountant with good knowledge of media buying. There are so many possible permutationns: loads of bad position pages at an overpriced standard discount rate with a wrapper thrown if for good will.Good Hunting! A mobile libary service is worth saving!
Andrew Martin ● 5431d