Today is the first day that The Boston Globe‘s previous home-delivery vendor, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment (PCF), is supposed to be fully back on the job. I figured things would be more or less back to normal this week.
Instead, the Globe‘s Dan Adams, in the midst of reporting on the weekend’s chaos and labor strife, drops this gem: “Although Globe executives expect rapid improvement beginning Monday, they cautioned it could take as long as six weeks for service to return to normal everywhere.”
Six weeks.
Is there any way that the Globe could return to the pre-December 28 status quo? Decide that the new vendor, ACI Media Group, didn’t live up to the contract and simply re-engage with PCF? I mean, you have to wonder if it’s ever going to work having one company deliver the Globe and another the Boston Herald, The New York Times, etc. Competition is great except when it isn’t.
Six weeks is obviously better than the four- to six-month prediction that prompted Globe executives to bring back PCF in the first place. But you have to figure there are going to be a whole lot of cancellations if the situation can’t be resolved sooner than that.