---
title: Unsilly season
description: Reach makes a sensible choice
---

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# Unsilly season

[Alan Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/author/alan-hunter)  01 August 2025

 4 min read

**Reach makes a sensible choice**

We are in the middle of what the British papers love to deride as “the silly season” – while simultaneously ensuring that it lives up to that moniker with their journalistic choices.

Everyone’s on holiday, nothing much is happening domestically, so jump on any old nonsense if it’ll help fill up the paper and website. It can only be a matter of hours before we are told that a shark has been spotted off Cornwall.

In this environment it was great to see something profoundly unsilly. Late last month Reach, Britain’s biggest publisher, announced that it was at last ready [to experiment with digital subscriptions](https://tomorrowspublisher.today/editors-picks/reach-changes-tack-to-prioritise-digital-subscriptions/).

Being free for online readers had previously been an act of faith for Reach, but now, under new chief executive Piers North, they will pursue what he described as “one market trend we haven’t yet taken advantage of”.

He was clear that this was part of revenue diversification initiatives and at HBM Advisory we agree that subscriptions are not the be all and end all of news monetisation, although an attractive option.

In his commentary on Reach’s half-year results, North said he was working to meet the company’s vision “to meet people where they live, both on and offline, through their locations, passions and values”.

In that vision sits what I believe is a good foundation for a successful subs business. In our consultancy work, we tell clients that the basis of subscription success rests on meeting at least one of the following three requirements of users:

Content you can’t get elsewhere

Content that provides proximity to expertise

Content that feeds their passions

In Reach’s vision, there’s at least two of those covered. It’s easy to argue that local news content is a great untapped subscription opportunity – there’s not a lot of it about any more and you only have to spend a few minutes on a local WhatsApp group to realise that people are really, really passionate about issues affecting their neighbourhoods.

Reach has a great opportunity here and we should note that in their newsletter strategy they are already pursuing local news and other passion points. I recall that a few years back they had great success with a newsletter from their Birmingham team about the hit TV series Peaky Blinders. More of that, I reckon. This promises to be a fascinating journey.

We should also tip a hat to the Daily Mail, [as it must now universally be called](https://tomorrowspublisher.today/editors-picks/daily-mail-unites-brands-and-targets-million-subscribers-by-2028/). They showed that you didn’t have to be a broadsheet news provider to charge for subscriptions. If the content is valuable enough to readers, they will pay for it. This will undoubtedly have influenced Reach’s decision.

This week it also emerged quite how pleased the Mail is with its progress in this area when it announced that it was targeting one million subscribers by 2028. There are many issues with having such a precise target (that’s for another day) but it certainly shows their ambition and confidence.

The sharks may be circling the news industry, but the subscription boat keeps getting bigger.

## Next blog post

<https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/the-case-for-optimism>

## [The case for optimism](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/the-case-for-optimism)

[Read more](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/the-case-for-optimism)

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