There’s nothing like a bit of corporate combat to kick off the year. If, like many in South Africa, you were still on holiday last week you might have missed this story on Fin24: veteran media writer Tony Koenderman on the Audit Bureau of Circulation relaxing its rules so that anything sold for less than 50% of its cover price can be counted as ABC-endorsed copy sales.

The juicy bit is that it was Avusa that drove the change, arguing that the rule was anti-competitive. So it appears that Avusa, the owner of the Sunday Times, the Sowetan and Sunday World, has kicked down a key pillar of the strategy of its rival, the Naspers-owned Media24, which has been pushing for some time now that “core circulation” be the standard.

Core circulation is copy sales sans third-party bulk (selling copies of your publication to a third party for them to give away – or not) and what is called “print media in education” sales or PMIE. The latter means bulk deals that go to disadvantaged schools that newspapers can count as circulation and simultaneously trumpet as helping to improve literacy.

As I wrote in a Moneyweb column last year, Media24 stole the march in July on everyone else in the newspaper industry and said that its advertising division would take out third-party bulk and PMIE sales from the circulation figures of its Sunday papers so that advertisers could focus on core circulation. The five papers are the Sunday Sun, City Press, Ilanga Langesonto, Rapport and Sondag.

In fact, the ABC numbers had started offering a breakdown of sales figures that separated out the third-party bulk and PMIE since the beginning of 2009. Media24, it seemed, had hit on a wily strategy as its arch rival on a Sunday, Avusa’s Sunday Times, has the most to lose because its high percentage of bulking – especially with City Press now improving under Ferial Haffajee. City Press is definitely a lot tighter and harder under Haffajee, previously the editor of the Mail & Guardian.

There are many critics of the ABC’s recent move, saying that it creates the opportunity for abuse and to confuse – just as bulking does. It could be used to mask declining circulation, they say, and that it will dilute what advertisers really care about: demographics… TO READ THE FULL COLUMN, GO TO MONEYWEB HERE.

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