Metro, the free daily owned by Torstar, Metro International and Transcontinental Media, announced this morning that it has added a Halifax edition. The first issue of Metro Halifax will be published Thursday, Feb. 14, with 25,000 copies distributed through a combination of promoters, street boxes and strategic locations.
Adding Halifax brings Metro‘s reach to seven Canadian cities which, says Bill McDonald, group publisher for English Canada, represents 46% of the Canadian population. Advertisers now have the opportunity to purchase advertising on a national, regional and local level, with packaged rates for National, National English, Eastern, Ontario, Alberta and Western editions. The newspapers’ target demo is a young, urban, active audience, 18-49.
‘With the addition of Halifax to our portfolio, readers in Eastern, Central and Western Canada will now have the opportunity to enjoy the Metro experience every day,’ says McDonald. ‘And for our advertising stakeholders, the marriage of creative client solutions and coast-to-coast reach represents a powerful combination only Metro can offer.’
Simultaneously, Marc-Noel Ouellette, SVP of Transcontinental Media’s newspaper group, announced the demise of The Daily News, the Halifax tabloid Transcontinental has owned since 2002. ‘It was an extremely tough business decision,’ he explained. ‘We worked hard to deliver an economically viable newspaper in the Halifax market with The Daily News, [so] we are delighted to continue our presence as a daily newspaper publisher in the Halifax market’ by launching Metro Halifax.
