The Oriental Daily News' arrival in West Malaysia is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The 48-page Chinese-language broadsheet is embroiled in a nasty distribution row with its four main competitors, a fracas that at one point appeared to be heading for the Malaysian courts.
Instead - with vendors claiming they have been warned against selling the Oriental Daily - the paper chose to fight back with a month's free distribution. Editor-in-chief Puah You Lai claimed this helped it achieve an average daily circulation of 150,000 last month.
Owned by timber baron Lau Hui Kang, the paper is squaring off against Sin Chew Jit Poh and Guang Ming Ribao, both of which are controlled by another timber tycoon; and the Malaysian Chinese Association's Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press.
Puah said the paper would now focus its energies on a subscriptions drive - the goal is to get 80 per cent of its readers signed up. Newsstand sales - the paper is priced at RM1.20 (US 32 cents) - is expected to generate the remainder of its circulation target. It remains to be seen whether the subscription drive will be enough to counter its difficulties in getting to the newsstands.
Media buyers are meanwhile counting on the Oriental Daily's arrival to inject more competition in a category dominated by a duopoly as well as encourage the other players to be more flexible in their advertising offers.
"A lot of consumers seem to like the newspaper, but it is saying that it is going to have around 90 per cent of its readers on a subscription basis," said a spokesman at FCB. "We are a bit sceptical about this because none of the other newspapers have achieved that."
Media agencies are also sceptical of the market's ability to support five dailies in the longer term. If the paper succeeds, P Sinniah, media director at Wizard Media Dynamics, believes "it could lead to the demise of the weakest of the lot".
The daily to beat is Sin Chew Jit Poh, the market leader with an average daily readership of 972,000 in the third quarter. China Press is a distant second (572,000), with the remaining two hovering just past the 350,000 mark.
The papers however compete for a relatively small share of the print revenue market since English-language titles command 49 per cent of the pie at US$282 million. "A lot of advertising is driven on a corporate basis and many of the corporates are skewed in favour of advertising in the English press," says Sinniah.