Another week, another freesheets saga. This time the spotlight has been turned on them by the National Readership Survey (NRS), which decided not to publish the inaugural set of readership figures for both thelondonpaper and London Lite because of potentially incorrect data.
NRS has said it will release the data for the two papers from its face-to-face and its self-completion questionnaires (SCQ) in September, but even a two-month delay is not good news when the papers are desperate to bring in more revenue to offset the huge costs of production and distribution.
Comfortingly for the papers, press buyers are united in their acceptance that this is perhaps a mild inconvenience, and that it is better to wait for accurate figures than to work with data that could be incorrect.
But could this situation have been avoided or, worse, could it happen again? Roger Pratt, managing director of NRS, says the organisation "had a choice".
"We could have proceeded on 16 July without the full sample or deferred the release of the data so that it includes April to June and the SCQ data," he says. "We decided it was best not to publish data we knew could change when we had the full sample. We were damned if we did and damned if we didn't."
Strong criticism
Pratt is confident the right decision was made, but admits that the criticism he is now facing is inflamed by the mere nature of the publications involved.
"A great deal of attention was going to be put on these numbers, which is why we took the view that we were better not to publish if the numbers might change," he says.
News International, publisher of thelondonpaper, like Associated Newspapers (London Lite), welcomed the judgement in so far as it is better to wait for the real McCoy, but its criticisms run deeper, claiming that in January, for example, NRS interviewers only spoke to 15 readers of thelondonpaper.
Ian Clark, News International Free Newspapers general manager, says: "During that month, we distributed about 475,000 copies of the paper every day, a total of about eight million papers in the month.
"Our paper is read by young, upmarket Londoners and I don't know how you can decide how young or upmarket a public is if you've talked to 15 out of eight million people. Quite frankly, it's a joke."
Both Clark and Doug Read, executive director of Metro/London Lite, recognise the benefits of NRS, with Clark calling it the "gold standard of research", but acknowledge that they are playing a waiting game to see if recent changes - such as the £25 store vouchers incentive now offered to respondents in London - are enough to make the figures more reliable.
"I'm willing to wait for the January to June data, but this is almost a live example of a situation where all the more acute problems of NRS could come to light," says Read.
"The two developments it has made so far - the SCQ and the financial incentive - are having a beneficial effect on the response rate, but we'll know more about the success when we see whether the sample sizes in the numbers that the surveys produce are credible and believable."
But Read also fears the problems in getting respondents means that the once critical role of the NRS is losing its impact and that agencies and media owners are increasingly presenting their own research to clients.
Crucial research
Press buyers tell a different story, saying NRS is still considered a crucial element of their day-to-day operations. "People in our department use NRS daily and we, as an industry, really need to invest in these research tools," says Anthony Gibson-Watt, buying director at Zed Media, who says NRS gives his clients "confidence in the measurement of their media output".
"There's been a tremendous physical effort from NRS in terms of getting it right, but perhaps it has taken longer than they thought."
Dan Pimm, head of press at Universal McCann, believes the two-month wait for data is a small price to pay. "We know how both titles are being distributed - the ABCs tell us that - but what's important is who's reading the papers, which demographics," he says. "Most sensible buyers will be happy to wait until the sample sizes are big enough to get the full reflection of what each title is doing."
After rows about dumping, recycling and distribution rights, this latest hiatus for the free papers is an added unwanted frustration.
Maybe the NRS has simply had the blame laid at its feet for lack of a better resting place.
HOW NRS OPERATES
Every month NRS releases six monthly rolling statistics on information gathered from 36,000 individuals over the age of 15 chosen depending on sex, age, region and social grade
NRS has had problems in the past finding young, professional Londoners to answer its interviewers' questions, so in January, as part of it's "ongoing development", NRS introduced the self-completion questionnaire (SCQ), which potential respondents are asked to fill out in their own time. The data is collated and released on a quarterly basis
SCQ data must be uploaded and analysed upon receipt, while data collected face to face is put into a computer there and then, meaning figures can be released monthly
The data release that was due on 16 July was delayed after it was found that the proportion of readership claims the SCQ respondents were making for the two titles between April to June was different from the proportion of claims from face-to-face respondents, which would have altered the final results, perhaps significantly
For example, if 200 out of 2,000 people asked in face-to-face interviews say they read a certain publication, the total percentage of readers is 10%. But then if 15 out of 300 SCQ respondents say they read that publication, totalling 5%, the overall total will drop to 9%