In a bid to gain new readers in metropolitan Los Angeles, the parent company of The Orange County (Calif.) Register last month rolled out a new tabloid daily in the fast growing south suburban county.

The full-color OC Post is home-delivered and printed Monday through Saturday, said Chris Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Freedom Orange County Information.

Anderson said Freedom upgraded the production capability of The Orange County Register to print the Post, which had an inaugural press run of 80,000 copies.

Evaluating new press

Among the improvements was a reel tension paster upgrade, completed last year. Brock Solutions and Masthead International refurbished 36 RTPs supporting The Register’s four Goss International Corp. Metro presses. The project enabled the paper to dramatically improve color registration, cut waste and boost press speeds.

Freedom is now evaluating the purchase of a new press at its Anaheim facility dedicated to producing the OC Post, Anderson said. That would ensure that the tab would have full color even as page counts grow and eliminate the square format necessitated by The Register’s 50-inch presses.

 

Anderson said OC Post features tightly written and edited reports on local, state and national news, as well as dedicated sections on health, arts, entertainment and business. Articles have no bylines nor do they jump to another page. The main paper has a maximum of 48 pages and includes a separate classified section Monday through Friday. The Saturday edition includes a housing section.

“OC Post is an outgrowth of months of research and hundreds of surveys to identify how we package and deliver useful information in a way that appeals to people in our area who rarely or never read a traditional newspaper,” Anderson said.

One-year, charter subscriptions to OC Post are priced at $19.99. Single copies are available at more than 1,000 newsstand and rack locations for 25 cents. The company expects home delivery circulation to top 140,000.

OC Post is a variation of a tactic The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., pursued last year when it launched a compact version of its broadsheet daily. The paper pulled the plug on the tab after it failed to woo as many new readers as anticipated.