Just four months after debuting an alternative compact version Malaysia's oldest newspaper, the New Straits Times, appears ready to consign its broadsheet format to history.
The NST's final broadsheet edition will probably roll off the presses within the next couple of months, according to the paper's editor-in-chief, Kalimullah Hassan, who oversaw the launch of the tabloid version in what was seen as a last ditch attempt to resuscitate flagging sales.
Circulation, which had been level with rival English-language daily The Star in the early '90s, dropped to less than half that of its competitor over the course of 10 years.
The NST's new size proved an almost immediate success, with distribution extended nationwide within a month of piloting the compact version in the Klang Valley. Four months later, the paper's new rate card refers to tabloid pages and the broadsheet is already virtually invisible on Malaysian newsstands.
The industry is keenly awaiting the next of wave of Nielsen's Media Index survey, which will give a good indication of the effect of the changes on the NST's popularity, though early signs are that the new size has proved a tonic for readership, with NST claiming double-digit year-on-year rises.
The impact on advertising, on the other hand, has so far been negligible, though media agencies anticipate that the revival triggered by the downsizing will lift revenues in the longer term.
"Advertisers and media agencies will look more deeply into the possibility of using the NST," says Geraldine Loh, managing director of Initiative Kuala Lumpur.
"For a long time, The Star was the only choice for a print campaign, but now I think the New Straits Times will give The Star a run for its money."
Circulation may be on the rebound, but the NST still has a long way to go if it wants to regain parity with The Star. Although its new rate card is cheaper, its CPM still makes it the more expensive buy.
Kalimullah however insists he is not playing catch-up, emphasising instead the paper's upscale audience and a more balanced advertising/editorial ratio than the ad-heavy Star, where editorial is sometimes squeezed to less than half of its pages.
"If I don't get 200,000, I still want to be a newspaper," Kalimullah says, stressing the word 'news'.
"That's the direction we are taking now."