Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991                   TAG: 9103290125
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SINGLE-COPY PRICES FOR ALL EDITIONS OF THE

A Saturday edition bought from any of the newspaper's 950 vending boxes or other retail outlets will cost 50 cents, up from 25 cents; Sunday editions will cost $1.25, up from $1; and, starting Monday, daily editions will be 35 cents, a 10-cent increase.

Home-delivery subscription rates will not be affected, said Dee Carpenter, circulation director.

Single-copy prices for the daily and Saturday papers were last increased in November 1979, newspaper officials said. The cost of the Sunday paper was last increased four years ago, in April 1987.

"Tell me another business that has not gone up in its price since 1979?" Carpenter said. "You can clip four coupons and you can get your money back. Everything after that, you're making money."

He said the weekend increases highlight a trend in the American newspaper industry: Readers seem more interested in buying and reading a newspaper on the weekends, when they have more time to read.

Until now, Saturday papers were priced the same as daily editions, Carpenter said, even though the popular Spectator guide to television and entertainment has been included in the Saturday paper. "It's still much cheaper than TV Guide and the demand is stronger than any other day of the week."

The Roanoke Times & World-News is the state's last major metropolitan paper to increase its single-copy prices, according the Virginia Press Association's directory of newspaper prices. Single copies of the Norfolk papers already cost 50 cents daily, while papers in Richmond and Newport News cost 35 cents. Sunday editions cost $1.25 for a single copy.

"It think there's been a lot of [price] movement in the last two years," said Ginger Stanley, executive director of the VPA. Nationally, more than a dozen dailies have raised their single-copy prices since November, according to News Inc., a trade magazine.

The increases come as readership of the newspaper's morning editions continues to increase while afternoon readership keeps dropping. Recently, the newspaper has begun converting some of its afternoon home delivery routes to mornings, fueling speculation that the demise of its afternoon edition is near.

"The trend is inescapable: P.M. papers all around the country are shutting down," Carpenter said. "It's the same here. If you looked at the trend for the past five to six years and projected it out, we would reach that point and we would shut [the afternoon edition] down by the end of the decade."

Generally, an afternoon paper whose circulation has slipped to 20,000 is considered ripe for conversion, he said. February's average daily afternoon distribution amounted to 32,565. That's 7,010 papers fewer than the same month the year before; much of the drop is attributable to route conversions to the morning paper.

For the same period, distribution of the morning editions has increased from 82,717 in February 1990 to 88,567 for the same month this year - a net gain of 5,850.

Still, newspaper officials say there is no firm date for elimination of the afternoon paper.

"There are lots of rumors circulating and most of them are wildly inaccurate," Carpenter said. "However, I think it is a fair statement that the trend lines on the p.m. paper are inescapable."