‘Common Expire Date’ Language Incorporated into Rule (Effective November 7, 2005)

At its November 2005 meeting, the ABC board of directors gave unanimous consent to amend Rule D 1.1 Paid Circulation Defined.

It has been a common practice for some publishers of weekly business publications to process all expired subscriptions at the end of a month, rather than throughout the month. This means that while the individual subscriber records may indicate the subscription expired on a specific date (e.g., July 12, July 19 or July 26), the publisher only processes the expired subscriptions on a common expire date at the end of the month (e.g., all on July 31).

For publications using a common expire date, the incremental copies served through the end of the month are considered paid circulation, not post expires. If used by a publication, this practice will be disclosed in the explanatory paragraph of the business publication’s Publisher’s Statement.

While ABC has long accepted this practice, language to govern it had not been incorporated into ABC’s rules. Rule D 1.1 Paid Circulation Defined has now been modified to incorporate language supporting the ‘common expire date’ practice.

See also D 1.1 Paid Circulation Defined

Posted 12/21/05