Sunday Newspapers, Now With CDs

VirtualUK writes "The BBC news site has a story today about The Times news paper now distributing a CD along with the tree mass that comes with its Sunday edition. They cite that one of the main reasons is that Internet connection speeds have still yet to catch up on the whole in order to benefit from the rich multimedia content of the CD."

Comments

Oh I get those

[zifty]

I used to get CDs with my paper all the time. Of course, they were from AOL...

Monthly, not every Sunday

[sinjayde]

The CD will come out monthly, not every Sunday as reported in the story.

I'm surprised this hasn't happened earlier actually. Magazine's have been slapping on CDs to their publications for a long while now (especially Gaming and computer mags) and these days you can even get CD's on Breakfast Cereal boxes.

Of course, whether or not any of the information contained on the cd's will be of any use/quality is another matter.

Already Done

[someguy456]

I've seen something like this done in a neighboring city, Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico (I live in El Paso, TX). The subscription rate is really low; the paper is almost completely distributed in stores and newstands. Every once in a while, the paper has a special edition contating a cd. I think it's only music for now, but it may change. The special edition costs around US$0.50 more, which is about the normal cost of the paper (Sunday doesn't cost any more). I have never heard anyone else actually mention it, so I don't think it is fairing well.

What the really mean is..

[SolubleFrank]

benefit from the rich multimedia content

"suffer from the bland multimedia advertising"

Pffft ... CD Newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Gonna be awkward trying to read the news while I'm on the throne.

Two mediums = bad

[TheAntiCrust]

Other than a few media clips the CD doesnt contain anything different from a normal newspaper. I think distributing the same thing in two mediums is annoying. I either want to read the paper, or watch a video. The short clips on the CD are easily available online too. The only place it makes sense to me to put a CD is on computer or game magazines where the CD content (game demos and apps) cannot be duplicated by 'traditional' means. Adding a CD to the paper makes it clumsy.

No more CD's please!

[Kegetys]

I prefer to have things available online these days rather than having them on a CD. I have hundreds and hundreds of CD's stacked up everywhere, and its becoming slower to find something small from those cd's than find and download it from the net. Especially the CD's that came with a magazine get useless quite fast as the things there get old, and the process of finding the cd and listening to the loud cd drive reading it is far less comfortable than just finding and using the same content from the internet.

I find it more interesting to have access to magazine articles from the net after subscribing. That way the content is always available from almost anywhere in addition to the paper magazine.

Re:Stuff that matters

[Charles E. Hardwidge]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this appears to be a story by one news site about a single newspaper in the United Kingdom that's only published one day out of seven distributing a CD ROM on an occasional basis. Excuse me while I dig out a list of other publications that provide a monthly CD. I'm sure there must be one or two...

The Times and Sunday Times are very much the same newspaper, though they're run as two largely seperate entities under two different editors. Both are owned by Rupert Murdoch, a hideous individual who is responsible for The Thunderer's decline in quality from its heyday. It's no coincidence that The Times is no longer referred to by this affectionate term, its teeth and reliability as a newspaper of record having disappeared years ago. One ray of hope is that the close and arguably biased coverage, of the Iraq War and subsequent inquiry into events surrounding its aftermath, may provide evidence that Murdoch is in breach of the agreement with the government of the time that allowed his takeover of the newspaper. Should the case of Murdoch not granting full editorial impartiality be proven he could lose the cornerstone of his international media empire. I'm sure I'm not alone in expressing the sentiment this happens sooner rather than later.

CD Contents

[bobbis.u]

I have the CD in front of me and for those that care, this is some of the stuff it contains:

• Lots of renault adverts
• Feature on David Bowie
• Film trailers (with a small write up): Calender Girls, Gigli, Le Divorce, Italian Job, Matchstick Men, Ned Kelly, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Young Adam
• DVD trailers: Antwone Fisher, Bulletproof monk, City Of God, Evelyn, Maid in Manhatten, National security
• Music (few short samples, CD writeup): David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Dido, Seal, Placebo, Starsailer, + about 10 others
• Few arts features: Andrew Lloyd Webber's paintings, Opera, Ballet stuff
• Game trailers: Colin McRae Rally 04, Crimson Skies, Great Escape, Italian Job, Rugby '04
• Few kids games and DVD trailers
• Best of TV guide
• What's on listings for your area (requires internet)

The loader is quite slick, but unfortunately it has been made with flash and took an age to load the first time on my machine.
As an asside you also got a code with the cd cover to see if you had won 1000gbp. I was tempted to write a program to brute it because it was only 3 letters (all ucase) and 4 numbers, but you also need to send in the cover to claim the prize...