SPH pulls plug on financially-ailing Project Eyeball

SINGAPORE: Singapore Press Holdings' (SPH) Project Eyeball newspaper has closed after losing S$13.3 million (US$7.3 million) since it launched in August last year as a weekday tabloid aimed at younger readers. The newspaper spent its three-year budget in the first 10 months. With SPH now involved into another financially-heavy venture in its new television business, it didn't have the appetite to top up funding for Project Eyeball. Cheong Yip Seng, editor-in-chief of SPH's English and Malay newspapers division, said: "We could find no reason to go back to the SPH board and ask for more capital. If we had even achieved half the revenue we had projected we could have lasted longer than 10 months." Cheong said the online edition - Projecteyeball.com - lost money because Singaporeans wanted free content. And circulation for the print edition fell well short of its forecast of between 25,000 to 35,000 copies. The shortfall has been blamed on SPH and rival MediaCorp later launching free daily tabloids, Streats and Today respectively. "These free sheets combined are producing over 400,000 copies a day, which is a lot considering the size of the Singapore market", said Cheong. Ad revenue also failed to meet targets because Project Eyeball had to compete against the free sheets and a plethora of other titles, according to Cheong. "There has been a downturn in the Singapore economy and there's excess media inventory out there."

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