The Dallas Morning News will eliminate same-day newspaper delivery to areas outside a 200-mile radius of Dallas on April 1, ending same-day circulation to such cities as Houston, San Antonio, Lubbock, Amarillo and Oklahoma City, parent company Belo Corp. announced.

The News will maintain circulation to Austin.

Belo encouraged readers in the affected areas to read DallasNews.com or to subscribe by mail.

The decisions allow Belo’s newspapers to focus on the home delivery and single copy circulation that matters most to advertisers, Belo officials said.

In addition, all Belo newspapers as of April 1 will no longer report “third-party barter circulation” in official circulation numbers. Newspapers often have arrangements with others to trade newspapers for such things as circus or sport tickets that they can offer to readers, advertisers or employees.

Belo also said it will limit other third-party initiatives and bonus days to no more than 3.5 percent of a paper’s reported circulation. Advertisers sometimes agree to buy a certain number of papers to be delivered to a targeted area. A bonus day is when a customer with a limited subscription gets a paper on a day that isn’t part of his subscription.

The elimination of outlying same-day delivery will reduce The News’ circulation by about 15,000 papers daily and 17,000 Sunday, while the changes in third-party barter and bonus days will cut reported numbers by about 18,000 daily and 24,000 Sunday.

The changes are expected to boost Belo newspapers’ earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by $5 million to $6 million in 2006 and $7 million to $8 million in 2007 and beyond. Most of the profit improvement will come from cost savings.

The third-party barter change affects all Belo newspapers. In Texas Belo also owns the Denton Record-Chronicle.

Newspaper consultant Miles Grove, president of MG Strategic Research Ltd. in Washington, D.C., said most newspapers that had considered themselves statewide papers have shrunk their circulation area before now.

He said the growth of online editions has made newspapers accessible to far-off readers without physically delivering a newspaper.

“In a place like Texas, it makes a lot of sense to reach those outlying areas electronically rather than in print,” Grove said.