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The article discusses several developments in the marketplace in the U.S. that contributed to the loss of U.S. newspapers' power to be arbitrary about advertising rates. In the 1970s, a newspaper's rate card was practically sacrosanct. Thirty years later, there are still rate cards but for major newspaper advertisers they are often points of departure, with the final destination to be arrived at through negotiation. Newspapers have lost the power to be arbitrary about rates. How this happened can be traced to developments in the marketplace, and underpinning all of them are an increase in competition and newspaper's gradually declining coverage of households. First, newspapers got into the junk-mail business. Two problems developed for newspapers with the onset of junk-mail delivery. First, entrepreneurs figured out that they could create private delivery systems that could compete for this business by undercutting newspaper delivery prices. The second and more important problem was that major advertisers that previously had been limited to buying space in a newspaper's regular pages had a cheaper alternative: preprint delivery. Another development that changed how newspapers do business was the growth in the number of television stations.