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West Coast publisher Black Press Ltd., fresh from launching two free daily newspapers in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, plans to add another in Kamloops and six more in Vancouver Island communities in mid-March.

The company plans a March 14 launch of the free daily tabloids, filled with wire copy and local advertising. In addition to Kamloops, they will be published in Victoria, Nanaimo, the Cowichan Valley, the Comox Valley, Campbell River and Parksville-Qualicum, all communities where Black Press already publishes papers -- but none of them daily.

This follows the launch in early February of two free dailies in Kelowna and Vernon, as adjuncts to the community papers Black Press operates there.

The Okanagan tabloids are dropped off at businesses and coffee shops, and were profitable immediately, according to Black Press owner David Black.

Now the same concept -- and the same content -- is being transferred to Vancouver Island, said Jim Tighe, president of Island Publishers, an arm of Black Press.

"From an editorial concept it's the same paper [as in Kelowna and Vernon]," Mr. Tighe said yesterday. The editorial content, put together in the Kelowna newsroom, mainly from Reuters News Agency reports, will be electronically transmitted to Vancouver Island for use in the other six papers, he said. Local advertising copy will then be inserted. Eventually, some breaking local news may be added, Mr. Tighe said.

About 10,000 copies of the free papers will be distributed in both Victoria and Nanaimo, with 3,000 or 4,000 circulated in the smaller centres. The company is counting on a high rate of pass-along readership to attract local advertisers, Mr. Tighe said.

Black Press's existing paper in Nanaimo is published three times a week, while the firm's papers in the other five centres are twice weekly.

'I hope we're going to attract people who have moved away from daily papers," Mr. Tighe said. Nanaimo and Victoria both have daily papers owned by CanWest Global Communications Corp., and the CanWest-owned Vancouver Sun also has readership on Vancouver Island.

The free papers in the Okanagan Valley have been so successful that Black Press decided to start another in Kamloops in the B.C. Interior on the same day as the Vancouver Island papers.

All the Black papers challenge the conventional wisdom that free daily papers can survive only in large cities with a sophisticated mass transit system. If the costs are low enough and the papers can be distributed efficiently where people gather, the concept can work in smaller centres, Mr. Black said.

Even Metro International SA, the Swedish publisher that has succeeded in establishing free dailies in 77 cities around the world including Montreal and Toronto, now publishes in some smaller centres.