RedEye: Not Free, Yet

By Margaret Lyons in News on Dec 10, 2004 6:07PM

Earlier this week, the Tribune Company announced that Hoy, its Spanish daily, is going to be free in Chicago and Los Angeles. It will still cost a quarter in New York, in case you were curious. This announcement comes in the wake of a circulation scandal—it turns out the Tribune Co. overstated Hoy's New York distribution by almost 43,00; the correct circulation is 49,681, not 92,604—but Trib higher-ups deny that there's a connection. OK, right, that's fine, we don't need to trust newspapers that much anyway.

So we're left to wonder: "Now that Hoy is Free, Is RedEye Next?" Well, that would certainly contradict our position of Man, You Couldn't Give That Shit Away, but we'll run with it.

Let's play a little game. Right now, we're going to read your mind. No, really. Relax. Let the power of Chicagoist wash over you. We're going to ask a question, and then we're going to read your mind by guessing your answer. OK, ready?

Should the Trib make RedEye free?

You are thinking: Uh, it's not free? I've been stealing crossword puzzles for months. Of the 80,000 copies of RedEye that people line birdcages with every day, only 14,000 to 15,000 are paid for. (Let's assume, for our argument, that those numbers are accurate. Zing.) That's about $3,750 per day, and at around 260 weekdays in a year, RedEye is still bringing in less than $1 million in sales each year. Is that…good? Or not that good? At the Tribune Company, can't you get $1 million out of petty cash? And pee in a gold toilet? And smoke cigars made of $100 bills? RedEye's sales barely pay for like, one Cub.