When we switched to all-mail, we also switched to mornings. The post office here is a hub (zip code xxx01), so not only does in-town get delivered the same day but most of the rural towns in our area get it the same day. All we have to do is get all the papers to the post office by 4:30 a.m.
Rural delivery is actually better than it was when we printed afternoons. Those subscribers used to have a one- or two-day delay. Now those subscribers get it the same day as well.
Our sister paper, where ours is printed, has to deliver the paper to each post office since theirs is not a hub. But they also get extra time to get those papers distributed since they have an hour later deadline and some of the rural post offices don't have to have the papers until 6:30.
I've heard of one place that went all-mail and had to switch back to carriers (Garden City, Kan.). Apparently, people (including my parents) were upset about not being able to read their "morning" paper until they came home from work because their mailman didn't come around until 2:30 in the afternoon. They switched back to carriers and ran house ads promising home delivery by 7:30 a.m.
Here, people don't seem to care that much. I suppose they're happy our little town still has a "daily" paper (even though we dropped the Thursday edition a month ago ... partly because of the increase in postage) so what's it matter if they don't get to read it until after 5 when they get home? One person told me that he says it's a "when you get it paper" versus a "morning paper."
