For their first iPad app, the publications have launched e-edition replicas that mimic the printed red-tops in every way, save for the £0.45 ($0.72) price.

Many publishers like The Guardian and FT, for their first iPad foray, launch for free on the device, often with a big advertising sponsor, in order to build audience, only to require subscriptions a few months later. Though most newspaper websites, including on iPad, are free, the typical iPad newspaper app subscription pricepoint has settled at £9.99 per month.

For the Mirror and Record, however, there is not yet any suggestion that the zero cover price is a temporary, audience-gathering exercise.

That makes this launch interesting. In a possible future where print is replaced by tablet consumption, the Daily Mirror and Daily Record just became freesheets. Former Mirror digital publisher Matt Kelly calls it “game-changing”.

remarkable move on ipad by The Daily Mirror – totally free five days a week, then the weekend editions only available in print. Gamechanger.

— Matt Kelly (@mk1969) December 3, 2012

London’s Evening Standard has already successfully gone free in print on the city’s streets, increasing advertisers’ exposure through heightened circulation, and recently moved back in to profit. Some industry observers believe only a free future is viable in an age where paid circulation is declining for most titles.

In the Mirror and Record‘s cases, the e-edition downloads are free only on weekdays — weekend editions still require payment.

But newspapers’ historic strength has been their financing by multiple revenue streams — ads and cover price. So are the Mirror and Record crazy to lock themselves in to a future where no-one pays anything for them?

Last year, the papers jointly circulated over 1.4 million printed copies per day, making £256.6 million in annual circulation revenue and £135.1 million in advertising revenue.

So, in a future in which they replaced their paid, printed newspapers with free tablet editions, the publications would be losing their largest income source.

Last year, they reached around 4.1 million readers per issue combined. But this secondary readership in a tablet world would certainly diminish, since few people will share their iPad in the same way they will share a low-cost printed paper. So even advertiser outlook may be diminished.

Also, tablet ownership amongst the Mirror and Record reader demographics are not yet at the levels of, say, The Times.

However, there is one big benefit that likely rides above all others for the titles — any free downloads they do get will be added to their declining print circulation. That is because, while native-looking tablet apps don’t count toward ABC data, e-replica distribution can be pitched, by canny ad sales staff, as extra circulation.

What we are likely seeing is the iPad being used to prop up circs, more than the definition of a whole new business model in its own right.

All in all, this is likely a smart first move for publisher Trinity Mirror to gently build up a tablet audience and stabilise its declining print base. When readers open the app — which, by virtue of being a replica, was likely cheap to build and which requires zooming to read text easily — they are asked by Apple to share their name, email address and post code with the publisher.

That information can be used to target future promotions — perhaps future subscription invitations?

Many a publisher tweaks its tablet and mobile business model along the way, and I would be surprised if Daily Mirror and Daily Record are yet committing themselves to a free future forever.

While not pleasant for those involved, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise for Beeb staff: last October Auntie announced it had an unwelcome £2 billion budget deficit and that overall costs would have to be slashed by 12 percent and the news and current affairs budget by five percent. Under the Creative Futures plan to solve these problems, the BBC will cut 2,500 jobs over six years, 230 in Scotland. Some Scottish staff and the production of programmes like Question Time will be moving out of Glasgow to the Beeb’s new Salford complex. On Monday the BBC said it was axing 210 of the 740 staff in its Resources department, adding up to some serious long-term savings.

Clash, a London- and Dundee-based music magazine, has received a £230,000 investment grant from the Scottish Government to accelerate its online offering. The outfit, which launched in bring in 2004, will plough a total £500,000 in to its eight-month-old website, which already gets 70,000 monthly uniques, adding 18 jobs for reviews, journalists, ticketing and multimedia, MusicWeek said.

MD John O’Rourke: “We now have the opportunity to develop the platform with more applications that will captivate our unique community of music tastemakers and help realise our global aspirations. Clash will continue to concentrate on quality in both our content and delivery, streaming many exclusives and adding new channels, all of which shall see the level of growth continue.”