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London is now a city awash in free newspapers. As of last week, two new afternoon titles are being handed out on the streets of central London: News International's thelondonpaper and Associated Newspapers' London Lite.

They join Metro, the seven-year-old title also published by Associated and available to London commuters every weekday morning, and relative newcomer City AM, which is distributed by hand and just celebrated its first birthday.

The rise and rise of the freesheet has lead to predictions of a dire future for paid-for titles. One mooted scenario is that every newspaper publisher will have some kind of free edition, which could simply be more of a news digest without the detail.

The worst case, at least for those who still see the role of newspapers to provide (expensive) in-depth journalism that can hold governments and business to account, is the end of paid-for newspapers entirely.

The inexorable rise of freesheets comes as their paid-for counterparts see their circulations fall and advertising revenues wane.

While they struggle to beat the drift away from traditional media to the internet, innovations that once made them successful are now holding them back. The weekend papers are now so big that readers feel they've wasted their £1.70 if they don't read the whole thing. And where they once broke all the news to the population over a bowl of cornflakes, we now live in an environment of 24-hour news via television, the internet and mobile devices.

Ironically, while the buzz-phrase of the early dotcom boom was "content is king", newspapers are cutting back on journalists and, editorially speaking, many of the newspapers are becoming indistinguishable from each other - or from the colour gossip magazines that now abound.

In contrast, the freesheets offer a digest of current events, aimed at a youthful audience who aren't really buying newspapers anyway. Because titles such as Metro are distributed first thing in the morning, advertisers issuing a call-to-action to consumers are finding it is money well spent - especially for categories such as finance and telecoms providers.

Dominic Williams, press director at Carat, is one of those excited by the developments in the newspaper industry. Admitting he was a naysayer when Metro first launched, he says freesheets have been a success because of the changing habits of consumers.

Double take

"I think thelondonpaper will be successful - they've spent a year working on it, they've got a lot of backing at News International, there's a gap in the market between 4pm and 7pm and they're distributing it at 700 points," he says.

Associated's London Lite may have been simply seen as a last-ditch defence mechanism, but Williams believes they are pulling it off.

"They've learned so much from the Evening Standard and Metro that I think they will get it right," he says.

Claudine Collins, managing partner at MediaCom, which counts News International among its clients, is understandably upbeat about the rise of freesheets. But even looking wider than just thelondonpaper, Collins is positive about their future.

"There is no reason why the afternoon freesheets shouldn't be equally as attractive as morning freesheets - just in a different way. In the morning you are geared up ready to go to work, whereas in the evening you are winding down, ready to go home.

"They are two different mindsets, but some clients will find the morning mindset more attractive and for others it will be the afternoon/evening mindset," says Collins.

These advertisers are likely to be those in entertainment, restaurants and drinks brands, wanting to target readers as they plan what they are doing with their evenings.

Even if consumers love thelondonpaper and London Lite and others are inspired to follow suit, Williams points out that just because publishers are merrily launching new papers, it doesn't mean advertisers are upping their print budgets. The result is that more people are fighting for a slice of a pie that isn't getting any bigger.

"A lot of people forget that new budget doesn't appear just because a new paper is launched. There's not an endless pot of money," says Williams.

Ian Clark, general manager of News International Free Newspapers, is not worried. "Budgets may not be getting bigger, but we have clearly seen free newspaper launches are bringing in new readers," he says.

"If we can give print media buyers greater coverage of that audience, that's got to be valuable for advertisers."

Where the freesheets are undoubtedly getting it right is in reaching a market defined by Metro as "young urbanites" - a market not reached by a lot of the other newspapers, and increasingly switching off their televisions in favour of the internet.

With the distribution of these two new afternoon papers in a relatively limited area of central London, largely populated by a demographic brands dream of reaching, it makes a compelling proposition.

Guy Zitter, managing director of the Daily Mail, says the readership of London Lite won't differ massively to that of Metro - an audience advertisers pay a premium to reach.

"Everyone is trying to capture this audience. Advertisers want them, but they're not watching telly and they don't buy newspapers. So you are left with this opportunity [while they are commuting] - instead of having them stare at the hole in their sock or out a window, you can give them something to read," he says.

In a dig at his rivals at Associated, Clark claims London has not been well served by a London newspaper, creating an opportunity for thelondonpaper.

"Metro does a fine job, but by its own admission it is a national newspaper. And clearly the Evening Standard has been in decline for some time," he says.

But this market of young urbanites could soon be saturated - so what next for freesheets? World domination may be a way off, but it doesn't end with the London market. News International has hinted it may take its freesheet into other regions, and the Manchester Evening News has already proven how successful the model can be with free distribution in Manchester city centre.

24-hour brand

News International's Clark will not be drawn on the company's future freesheet plans, although his job title gives more than just a hint: general manager of News International Free Newspapers. Associated has also just named the man who has been managing director of Metro for the past four years, Steve Auckland, as head of its free newspaper division.

Another similarity in the two companies' strategies is their aim to create brands that exist well beyond 48 pages of newsprint, with websites, blogs and mobile phone content, creating, as Clark puts it, "a 24-hour brand". Both companies also mention revenue streams other than traditional display and recruitment advertising - but are not being drawn on details.

News International faces less likelihood that its afternoon newspaper in London, or in other markets, will cannibalise any of the audience for its stable sisters The Sun or The Times as it will fulfil a very different need.

But clearly this will be a trickier scale to balance for Associated, with consumers having a clear choice between the Evening Standard, whose cover price went up last month from 40p to 50p, and London Lite.

It hopes that olders readers will stick with the Standard because of its in-depth coverage - certainly, London Lite has started life with the feel of a red top. And on the advertising side, space will be sold on both newspapers by the Evening Standard sales team, ensuring there will not be internal competition for budget.

Trinity Mirror, which faces constant speculation about when it will sell off the Daily Mirror, did not wish to comment for this feature. But with the tabloid market shrinking, if Trinity Mirror wishes to remain a publisher of national titles, will it be the next publisher to launch a free title?

It is not just a UK trend. According to figures released by the World Newspaper Association earlier this year, global newspaper sales were up 0.56% in 2005, and increased 6% over the past five years. But when free dailies are added to the paid newspaper circulation, global circulation increased 1.21% last year, and 7.8% over the past five years. The association says free dailies now account for 6% of all global newspaper circulation and 17% in Europe alone. On the one hand, it seems that cracking the formula for a successful free newspaper is not terribly tricky.

As MediaCom's Collins points out: "The basis of a successful free newspaper is simply down to two factors - giving the consumer editorially what they want and the distribution method."

But she also warns that even though the newspaper may be free, if the product is editorially poor and does not give people what they want, consumers will not pick it up and read it.

Some sections of the media are predicting the end of newspapers entirely - others say that paid-for titles are on their way out.

But the past two years have seen more change and excitement than the industry probably saw in the 18 years prior, and have proven that newspapers are adept at adapting to survive. Two years ago, the battle was fought on cover price, then resizing was all the rage; this year has been all about new free launches.

Whether this spurt of innovation proves to be a mere stay of execution or whether it has saved the grand old newspaper industry for future generations is still anyone's guess

EVENING FREES TO BID FOR STATION CONTRACTS

Thanks to Express Newspapers-owner Richard Desmond's successful complaint to the Office of Fair Trading that Associated Newspapers effectively had a monopoly in its distribution deal for Metro, there are now plans for an afternoon freesheet to be distributed via Metro's bins in London Underground and Network Rail stations.

At the moment, thelondonpaper and London Lite are being distributed by hand in central London, but News International and Associated Newspapers are among the companies who have registered bids for the two contracts.

Industry sources say hand distribution could make the value of the London Underground contract next to nothing.

The argument goes that with newspapers being distributed at street level in consumer-heavy areas of central London, by the time they get into the stations themselves people won't need to pick them up.

The most confusing scenario for consumers would be if one publisher were to win the Network Rail contract and another were to win the Tube contract - especially if neither went to News International or Associated Newspapers.

Despite this, for the immediate future, the two contracts will not be combined.

Network Rail is in the process of negotiations with bidders, with no clear date for a decision at this stage.

Spokesman PJ Taylor said the company had decided to conduct its own tender process separately from Transport for London, but added: "We're not ruling anything out."

However, a spokesman for Transport for London was less convinced there would be a joint tender, saying: "They are totally separate contracts, totally separate bids - there are no other plans at the moment."

FREESHEETS ON THE CONTINENT

London is not the only city whose residents have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to freesheets.

Metro International's launch in Paris in 2002 did not initially go down well with unions, who dumped 200,000 copies of the paper into the city's gutters over fears that it would harm the French media industry.

However, freesheets are now a daily part of life for Parisiennes, who now have titles including 20Minutes Paris and Direct Soir, which appears in the afternoon, to choose from - as well as Metro, which survived its rocky start.

As in the UK, the established titles have been looking at how to fight back. Le Monde is teaming up with investors including Vincent Bollore, chairman of Havas and the largest shareholder of Carat's parent company the Aegis Group, with the aim of launching a free daily morning newspaper.

However, it appears that the confidence in free being the way forward is not universal.

Reports appeared in August that Le Figaro, which revealed in February that it had plans for a free evening newspaper in Paris, had changed its mind about the launch.

Over the border in Germany, freesheets have been slower to take off. However, this summer saw Holtzbrinck Verlag, publisher of the business daily Handelsblatt, launch a free title called Business News in eight German markets.

The publishers are taking a cautious approach, with a circulation of only 80,000 initially. It is being distributed to offices.