The End of White Pages?

OK, that headline is a little bit ahead of the facts, but the question is a legitimate one for the Yellow Pages industry. As we report in this week’s Local Media Journal, Canada’s Yellow Pages Group has moved its publishing timetable for residential White Pages from 12 to 18 months.

As we note in LMJ, this move is one that almost any directory publisher would adopt if it could in order to reduce costs and the clutter of directory titles that are now a fact of life in many global directory markets.

If YPG’s experience offers a positive example, the question will be whether other publishers will begin pushing for the relaxation or elimination of requirements to produce print residential White Pages directories. This has already happened in Brazil. My view is we have already seen the beginning of the end of a product that has been losing relevance for some time now.