FOR THOSE tired of thanking Crunchie it's Friday, Trinity Mirror is hoping to come to the rescue. Shortly arriving in train stations and office receptions on that day of the week will be Business 7, a free business weekly aimed at thrusting young employees with too little time to read the papers.

With 20,000 copies to be distributed first thing on Friday mornings at transport links in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen and to certain offices across Scotland, Trinity will have sent a shot across the bows of the Scottish national newspapers. Friday is both vital for sales and the day The Scotsman and The Herald carry their all-important weekly recruitment sections. The new title also steals a march on London free business daily City AM, which has plans to launch in Scotland this year.

At a time when most other publishers have been reducing their news output, Business 7 intends to round up the week's business stories, break news and preview the following week, when it launches on October 5.

With Trinity Mirror having learned a thing or two about free papers from Record PM and Scottish Metro, the new title will also carry business lifestyle features and specialist pages, and promises comment from well-known columnists.

It will be backed by a business7.co.uk website, carrying daily business news and things such as discussion forums and business blogs.

The editor-in-chief is to be Alasdair Northrop, editor of Trinity's Scottish Business Insider magazine, with Jonathan Russell of Record PM as part-time editor and Erikka Askeland, Northrop's existing number two, as chief reporter. Askeland will be assisted by one other reporter, who has yet to be hired, some freelance help and a content deal with wire agency Press Association.

According to Northrop, Trinity is launching the product because it sees a gap in the market. He says: "Other papers tend to concentrate more on public-listed companies, even though Scotland is mostly made up of smaller private companies.

"Obviously the Baxters and Walkers get a fair shout, but if you look at the Insider 500 his magazine's annual survey of leading Scottish companies, there's an awful lot that nobody knows much about. Together with some in-depth analysis, there will be lots of stories about Scottish business. And the leisure section will be like Metro with pinstripes, with car reviews, wine reviews and so forth."

If this all sounds familiar, you could well be thinking of Business am. That pink daily was conceived in the Scottish offices of the Mirror Group before the merger with Trinity, but management decided it was too risky and pulled the plug. This led to its two architects, commercial director Jim Chisholm and development director John Penman, quitting to start Business am with Swedish backer Bonnier in 2000.

It folded after two years as the dotcom crash bit, with around £20 million lost and circulation hovering around 11,000. Around 125 jobs were lost.

The question for Mark Hollinshead, managing director of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail and the driving force behind Business 7, is why should it be any different this time around?

Hollinshead says: "Business am was based on the paid-for subscription model. We looked at it in detail at the time and didn't believe it was the right way to go. To attract advertisers you need to identify your audience on day one and identify a distribution methodology to reach them."

He also points out that Business am was daily. But even if Business am's cover price was its downfall, not to mention launching on the brink of a global recession with too many staff, it does not change the fact that Business 7 is attempting to reach the same audience.

Given that the Financial Times sells in the order of 5000 copies in Scotland, it surely seems optimistic to believe that Business 7 can find 20,000 willing readers? Hollinshead disagrees. "We believe that the free formula and distributing to the place of work delivers that audience pretty quickly and will enable us to present them to advertisers from day one," he says.

Chisholm, who has gone on to work as a strategy adviser for the World Association of Newspapers specialising in the free newspaper market, agrees with Hollinshead. He claims that there is certainly room for a free business weekly and probably also a daily in Scotland.

"Business am demonstrated that there was both substantial interest and more than enough daily business news to be covered," he says, adding that he proposed taking Business am free towards the end but was turned down by Bonnier.

The other vital issue for Trinity Mirror is whether the product will be right. First and foremost, there are questions over the content.

With an editor-in-chief and editor distracted by other titles and only two dedicated reporters, who also have to service the website, surely this will restrict breaking stories?

Hollinshead responds: "You don't do a Business am where you launch with 50 journalists and then have to reduce to 10. But at the same time, we're not trying to be the FT. It's a weekly free title for fast-moving people."

He rejects any suggestion that having no reporters in the north might be a problem. Northrop, while busy looking after Insider and the Record business pages, has enough contacts and expertise in areas like energy to be able to deliver whatever is needed, he says.

He also has no time for fears that the paper might be too parochial if it follows Insider's very Scottish outlook, saying it will cover broader stories as long as they are relevant to a Scottish audience.

Kenny Kemp, former business editor of the Sunday Herald, while broadly welcoming the new paper, is one who points to risks. He says: "The publication will struggle to be lucrative until it proves it is going to valuable and not regurgitate PR puffs.

"As much as Alasdair Northrop has done a good job with Insider, it can be pretty bland. There isn't much in there that's very critical of Scottish business or very global. The new publication will need to avoid that."

If Business 7 can overcome these pitfalls, the aim is to attract advertising in areas like luxury motoring, business travel, high-end IT, media and marketing and recruitment.

Although some senior executives at rival titles have questioned the logic of publishing on Fridays, when most workers are winding down for the weekend, it can hardly be a coincidence that Trinity Mirror has gone head to head with them for this most vital market.

Hollinshead's view is that it will not take share from the other papers. He says this is about reaching people who do not read papers rather than the older committed readers of the likes of The Scotsman and The Press and Journal.

Others such as Jim Chisholm add that the readers of the main papers do not buy them for business news anyway, although that is surely not true of everyone. It also says nothing of the threat from a daily business news website.

Having said all that, however, the response appeared relatively relaxed last week. Feeling untouched by the Record PM, rivals are unimpressed by Trinity's obviously small commitment to its new project. Meanwhile, Lawson Muncaster, managing director of City AM, says the new title will make no difference to his title's launch plans north of the Border. It still expects to arrive this side of Christmas.

Among the Scottish qualities, however, everyone is waiting to see the paper before they reach final decisions on whether to react. If Business 7 dazzles, we could yet see the return of things such as the daily pink business pull-out that The Scotsman launched in response to Business am at the turn of the decade. If Trinity is to make good on whispers that the title could be rolled into England, the noise from Scottish rivals in the weeks ahead will be a good early indication of its potential.