Star-News provides anchor for Houston newspaper magnate's suburban network.

Star-News provides anchor for Houston newspaper magnate's suburban network

William Dean Singleton raised a few eyebrows last year when he bought the Star-News in Pasadena for $55 million in cash. Industry analysts pointed to the fact that the Houston newspaper magnate paid less than a third that price per subscriber when he paid $95 million for the Denver Post, a paper with several times the Star-New's circulation.

But Singleton's decision to pay top dollar for the 40,000 circulation daily is looking positively sagacious with the formation of the Los Angeles Newspaper Network. LANN, an advertising package being offered to national accounts, is a product of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Management Co. formed in July by Singleton and Thompson Newspapers.

LANN teams up Singleton's Star-News with Thompson's Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune in West Covina and offers national advertisers an opportunity to blanket Los Angeles' populous and affluent eastern suburbs with a single buy. Most importantly, combining the three newspapers gives the LANN sales team boasting rights to a higher San Gabriel Valley circulation than the Los Angeles Times, 110,000 to 102,500 respectively.

The Times, already fighting losing battles to the north against the Daily News and the south against The Register in Orange County, may have a new war brewing on its eastern front.

In addition to claims of greater penetration, the LANN advertising package parades a host of demographic tables, charts and graphs that illustrate advertisers' most sought-after audiences. They include:

* The average household income in the LANN market ($44,835) exceeds both the Los Angeles County ($39,725) and national averages ($35,166).

* Eleven of the 25 fastest-growing cities in Los Angeles County are located in the LANN market. In order: Walnut, San Dimas, Covina, La Verne, Azusa, Duarte, Glendora, Baldwin Park, South El Monte, West Covina, El Monte.

* LANN is the 24th largest retail market in the United States.

* LANN ranks 24th nationally in buying power.

LANN also provides statistics showing the Times with only 24 percent penetration in Los Angeles County and declares: "You cannot cover the Los Angeles metro market with only one newspaper."

Richard Barth, research and promotion manager of LANN, said the advertising package gives the three newspapers a chance to compete for national advertising in ways they couldn't individually. While the Tribune and Whittier Daily News offered joint advertising buys before the formation of LANN, Barth pointed out that the addition of the Star-News has rounded out full coverage of the San Gabriel Valley.

"Geographically it was natural to offer this to our customers on the national buy. It's just more advantageous for a national advertiser who wants to generate as few invoices as possible to buy two, three or four newspapers in one shot," Barth explained. "LANN gives us a greater amount of circulation . . . and national advertisers tend to go down the list and buy the largest circulations."

Barth declined to offer any figures relating to increased ad linage or revenues since LANN went to market in July. He did say, however, that a similar package is being developed under a different moniker for local advertisers.

Frank O'Toole, director of display advertising at the Times, said he could not comment on LANN because he was not familiar with the product. "We've known they were going to do something like this but I have not seen the proposal." he said.