1982 Started from Hong Kong

Chapter 363: Tabloidization

In a parallel universe.

With the help of Oasis' black gold, Li Zhiying set off a bloody storm in Hong Kong's newspaper industry less than ten years after the establishment of Forbidden Fruit Daily.

By lowering prices at a loss to attract readers, dozens of newspapers were quickly wiped out. Even a strong newspaper like Sing Tao Daily collapsed in this price war. In the end, only the financially strong Oriental Daily and Jin Liangyong's Ming Pao were left struggling, but their sales were much lower than before.

"This time when I enter the media industry, I plan to spend NT$5 million and slowly lose money."

Shanjiao Mansion, Tai Po Road.

Li Zhiying leaned leisurely on a rattan chair, puffing smoke from a cigar. In the cage in the backyard, the big black bear that symbolized his status was walking in the small space, growling softly from time to time.

There was another man sitting opposite Li Zhiying.

He has dark skin and a slim figure, and even with a flattering smile on his face, he cannot hide his fierce look.

The man's name is Cen Dejian, the leader of the Number Gang, and he is Li Zhiying's protector in the underworld.

However, although he is called a big boss, he is actually just helping him deal with some shady smuggling business. Cen Dejian has gnawed off a lot of pig skulls for Li Zhiying in the past few years, and the rewards are naturally quite generous. Relying on Li Zhiying's Jordan's overseas distribution lines, Cen Dejian smuggled underground Mark Six lottery tickets, contraband cigarettes, flour and even guns and made a fortune. Together with the "De" character pile, he occupies a considerable position in the Number Gang.

"Mr. Li is very generous. In short, no matter what you ask, I, Ajian, will go through fire and water!"

Upon hearing that Li Zhiying was planning to lose 500 million Hong Kong dollars to publish the newly released "Forbidden Fruit Daily", Cen Dejian immediately realized that there was new business coming, and he patted his chest and spoke with a gangster-like attitude.

"Be alert, Jian."

Li Zhiying took a deep puff of his cigar, a scarlet flame lit up, and he couldn't help but shudder. His eyes became hazy and his voice became weaker.

He said half soberly, "The group of newspaper professionals told me that the distribution of newspapers is very important, and even if you lose money, you have to make the losses in the right places. Next month, no, this month... Pick! It should be next month. You set up a distribution company next month and bring your colleagues to form a fleet to be responsible for the transportation and distribution of the Forbidden Fruit Daily. Don't say that I don't take care of you. Now that you have your own printing factory, I will give you the Mark Six lottery business of "Chuang Fu", "Ti Shi Huang" and "Liuhe Huang". The economy of Guangzhou has developed very fast in the past two years. Try to develop the underground Mark Six lottery business to the mainland..."

Cen Dejian burst into tears of gratitude, and wanted to kowtow to Fatty Li on the spot: "Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Li!"

Li Zhiying waved his hand and said, "In short, it doesn't matter how much money this "Forbidden Fruit Daily" makes, but the circulation must be high, so work harder!"

Cen Dejian nodded repeatedly and had already come up with a name for the upcoming distribution team in his mind, which was called the Diligent Distribution Company.

"OK, I won't tell you any more."

Li Zhiying, who had satisfied his craving for cigarettes, stood up from the rattan chair, extinguished the remaining half of his cigar, stood up and straightened his clothes: "The newspaper has just been launched, and I still have a lot of things to do. Now I'm in a hurry to shoot the promotional advertisement. That's it for now~"

…………

"Mr. Zhai, I just got statistics from the newspaper guy. On the first day of publication, the Forbidden Fruit Daily sold 2 copies at a low price of 20 yuan. Taking into account the printing costs and distribution costs, on average, the other party lost 5 cents for each newspaper sold."

Pan Yongqiang, marketing manager of "September 1st Daily", knocked on the office door.

Zhai Yuan was meeting three guests in the room.

Carlos Chan, James Wong and Chua Lan.

"Brother Jiale, I'll leave the publishing to you. Go talk to Xu Jiaqiang about hiring."

Zhai Yuan turned his head to look at Pan Yongqiang, nodded to him to wait, and continued to say to Chen Jiale: "Well, I don't have any other requirements for the distribution business, but there is only one thing, the newspapers are delivered from the printing factory every day and covered all the newsstands in Hong Kong within an hour at the latest, so that those bad guys can work harder."

"Understood, Brother Yuan, I will go to Xinji to ask for the person now."

Carlos Chan nodded slightly. Ever since the establishment of the Film Association at 91 Entertainment, his piracy group had been finding it increasingly difficult to make a living. Now that he had another way to make money, he could also appease his subordinates and prevent them from privately distributing pirated copies and bringing trouble to their boss.

In fact, it was very simple to curb piracy in Hong Kong at that time. All Qvod Technology had to do was to increase the price of blank CDs to squeeze the pirated living space and open up a line between the CD and the movie market. In the one or two years after the birth of VCD, Hong Kong's movie market was far from reaching the rampant piracy level of later generations.

Carlos Chan left right away.

Huang Zhan's hoarse voice followed and he looked at Pan Yongqiang and said in an exaggerated tone: "Selling a newspaper and losing 5 cents? Is this Mr. Li crazy? How can someone do business like this?"

Cai Lan was relatively familiar with the publishing-related business, and explained, "It's normal to fight a price war in the early stage to improve the brand image first. But this Boss Li is really evil. He can actually keep the price so low. If his Forbidden Fruit Daily doesn't raise the price, wouldn't it be a loss of tens of millions a year?"

Pan Yongqiang continued, "Today, many advertisers have contacted the Forbidden Fruit Daily and asked them to cancel their advertising space in other newspapers. This will have a huge impact on the newspaper industry. If this continues, in three to two months at most, the first batch of tabloid newspapers will be unable to hold on and close down."

Before this, most newspapers in Hong Kong were small businesses with low costs, and only needed a small number of readers and advertisements to survive.

Now that advertisers have turned to the Forbidden Fruit Daily, which has a daily circulation of 20, the impact on other newspapers can be imagined.

"Survival of the fittest is normal. Shouldn't people be allowed to use their money?"

After Zhai Yuan and the other three finished speaking, he smiled and said something.

With Ou Xi behind him, Li Zhiying will naturally not be short of money, but no matter where the other party's money comes from, in the business world, the only thing left is competition.

Seeing Zhai Yuan's calm appearance, Pan Yongqiang felt a little more at ease.

After all, this young marketing manager is only in his early thirties this year. Tiantian Daily is the longest job he has held since graduating from university. He is also a veteran who founded the company together with Ho Sai-chu, so he has some feelings for the company.

Therefore, ever since the team of "Tiantian Daily" left, he has been worried. Later, he learned that even He Shizhu was going to give up the newspaper, and he almost lost his last hope. When the new boss Zhai Yuan re-acquired the newspaper, although it was renamed "September 1st Daily", he finally continued his career.

Pan Yongqiang forced a smile and asked, "Mr. Zhai, now that the Forbidden Fruit Daily is coming on strong, if you have any good ideas or suggestions, why not tell me so that I can feel more at ease?" "Young people should not be too impetuous, just do a good job of content first~"

Zhai Yuan glanced at him and said with a smile: "We have just set up a distribution department, but we are still short of staff. Before the newspaper changes its name, I will give you 10 million yuan to go to various newspapers to recruit some senior people. In addition, most of the company's reporters have been taken away by Wei Jianbang. Recruit a group of new people as soon as possible. After the official start of work, each person will be equipped with a motorcycle so that they can rush to the scene to interview and report in the first time if there is an emergency..."

Regarding personnel issues, Zhai Yuan gave Pan Yongqiang detailed instructions.

He did not have as much cash as Li Zhiying did, especially since the main editorial staff of the newspaper now relied entirely on the non-staff support of the new X agency. There was no prospect for it from top to bottom, and the only sign left was the "Tiantian Daily". Therefore, he could only fill the holes step by step before talking about longer-term goals.

"Reporters with motorcycles?" After Pan Yongqiang went out to do his work, Cai Lan's eyes lit up: "Sure, Ayuan, no one has ever tried this before."

"Well, now reporters in Hong Kong either travel on foot or in vans, and when they get to the accident scene, the cordon is set up."

Zhai Yuan nodded and said with a smile: "If everyone has a motorcycle, we should be faster than the police and firefighters in the future, saving us from having to constantly get information from the police and not being allowed to take photos of the scene. It's just that the cost is a little higher, but compared to the forbidden fruit, it's nothing."

"Okay!" Huang Zhan slapped his thigh and said, "Let's organize a motorcycle competition for the September 1st Daily News later, invite a group of pretty girls to act as reporters, and take photos to sell to TV stations."

Cai Lan said with interest: "It sounds good. If you are willing to do it, Ayuan, I will talk to the wireless purchasing department."

"Uncles, please stop letting your thoughts wander! Please come over and do some serious work!"

Zhai Yuan said helplessly, "Now Ming Pao has Jin Liangyong, and Forbidden Fruit Daily has invited Ni Xian to serialize a new novel. You two are the only two left among the four great talents in Hong Kong. You should at least help me get two pages, right?"

Huang Zhan and Cai Lan both looked embarrassed.

"A Yuan, to be honest, it's easy for me to write some dirty jokes, but it's very difficult to write a serialized novel!"

"me too."

Cai Lan echoed this and shook her head at Zhai Yuan, indicating that it would be difficult to handle.

"Don't worry, I'll find someone else to do the serialization page, so please make other arrangements."

Zhai Yuan was very clear about the level of the two talents in front of him. In terms of novel writing alone, they were far behind Jin Liangyong and Ni Xunliu.

What is six throws? It means picking up a stone and throwing it six times.

Besides, reality is not a place for happy reading after all. How can you expect to create a newspaper sales miracle just by relying on a hit novel?
Impossible~
"After the name change, the newspaper will still have 16 pages and 64 pages, with news and supplements accounting for half each. The previous news section of Tiantian Daily had two pages, International Finance and Real Estate and South China News. This time I plan to cancel them and replace them with two pages, Hong Kong Food and Romance."

Zhai Yuan glanced at the two uncles in front of him and said with a smile: "I don't need to explain how to allocate them, right? They are all from the tracks you are best at."

Today, the Tiantian Daily is still in publication and still maintains the orthodox broadsheet reporting style, that is, no colloquialism, light entertainment and emphasis on credibility, mixed with in-depth exploration of book reviews, political commentaries and film reviews.

This was also the consistent style of Hong Kong's major newspapers at that time, such as Ming Pao and Sing Tao Daily.

The middle-class newspapers such as the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the Economic Times and the South China Morning Post are a mix of Chinese and English, taking an intellectual perspective and pursuing a market-oriented professional approach to the international market.

Small and medium-sized newspapers such as Sing Pao and Xin Bao use special pages such as horse racing, entertainment and consumption, and romance to attract readers.

Although it is a tabloid, it still has extremely high sales.

The reason is very simple. Just follow the fast-food tabloid format and delve deeply into the lower-tier markets, and you will make money in any era.

"So from now on, my 91 Daily News will no longer follow the serious route of traditional paper media. In five words, it will become a tabloid version of a major newspaper. We will try our best to remove all international news that is not related to Hong Kong and replace it with a gimmick newspaper that citizens like the most. We will invite a man named Dong Biao from the Jockey Club to do horse racing later, so that we will have three entertainment pages."

Before the newspaper was officially released, Zhai Yuan had already set the tone: "In a nutshell, since the Hong Kong government has abolished the charge of fake news, I don't need to worry about credibility, morality, and professional analysis. I will just rely on sensationalism to increase newspaper sales..."

…………

Coming out of the newspaper office.

Get in the car.

Zhai Yuan said to Wei Xing: "Brother Xing, I may need you and Shangguan Yonggan to do something in the future, but there is no rush for now. Wait until I defeat the other party in the business world first."

Satellite didn't understand the meaning of the second half of the sentence, but understood the first half. He narrowed his eyes and said "OK".

Zhai Yuan didn't say another word.

The current idea of founding a newspaper is to use the simplest black-and-white moral concept to turn broadsheets into tabloids, which is a means to increase sales.

But whether it can beat the money-burning "Forbidden Fruit Daily" remains to be seen.

But regardless of whether they can win or not, after learning about Li Zhiying's identity, the competition in the newspaper industry is not just about business.

Let’s add some color to it.

Zhai Yuan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to rest.

When the sales of "September 1st Daily" surpass those of "Forbidden Fruit Daily", even if there is only one copy, I will go and meet this person who is known as the biggest traitor since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

(End of this chapter)