The Denver Post will try to retain as many as 80 percent of Rocky Mountain News readers, an ambitious drive that begins with its first Saturday edition in eight years, 24 hours from now.

The Saturday Post that will hit driveways and porches will be a markedly different product than either the Sunday Post or the Saturday Rocky, even though it will carry familiar Rocky features - and writers.

News subscribers, who have been seeing The Post on Sundays since the two papers merged their business operations in 2001, already have an idea what the broadsheet looks and feels like.

"And we believe we'll hold onto most of them," said Dean Singleton, owner of The Post.

The Post already is doing several things to help with its grip.

It will automatically switch Rocky subscribers to The Post for the duration of the current subscriptions. And even before Scripps announced the Rocky's closure, The Post had hired 10 Rocky veterans - familiar columnists and skilled reporters with loyal followings.

All so that what the late Gene Amole used to call "the oversized paper up the street" won't seem quite so strange to the Rocky's tabloid loyalists Monday morning.

Keeping 80 percent of the Rocky's subscribers, Singleton's declared goal, will be a tall order. In other two-newspaper cities where one has folded, the track records of the survivors have not been that successful.

When the Houston Post folded in 1995, the rival Houston Chronicle's circulation jumped 32 percent within six months, then considered a big pick-up.

In 1992, when the Dallas Times-Herald closed, the rival Morning News gained 25 percent in the next six months. And in 1986, the death of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat led to a gain of 16 percent circulation for the Post-Dispatch.

"I think the vast majority of people understand we have a huge challenge in front of us to try to retain an audience that's been loyal to our competitor for a long time," said Post editor Greg Moore. "But most people in this market are very very familiar with both papers, in that they've been able to read both of them on the weekends for eight years.

"So we have a head start with a strong wind at our back."

The Saturday Post will have an entirely different flavor than either the Sunday Post or the Saturday Rocky. While it will have a lot of briefs on the hard news side, Singleton said the overall feel will be "light and breezy."

Added Moore: "It'll feel different because we're not going to be competing with our Sunday newspaper."

"It will have a much more contemporary look about it," Singleton said. "We've done research on both newspapers for years and the research has told us that readers want a quick read on Saturday. It will be a guide to the weekend."

That's based on The Post's research among readers, concluding that the Rocky's weekend strategy with longer enterprise stories wasn't the way to go.

"Maybe I shouldn't say it this way, but our research has told us the Saturday Rocky was the wrong product for that day. The Rocky used Saturday to be its Sunday newspaper with a lot of strong journalism.

"But research told us readers rejected that. As a newspaper guy, I loved it, but readers don't have a lot of time on Saturday morning to read."

The Rocky writers and features will be spread throughout The Post's week.

"We're trying to make the Rocky reader comfortable," Singleton said. "We didn't beat the Rocky, the economy did. The Rocky is an outstanding newspaper that does a great job and is loved in this community. We think our retention of those readers will be high."

flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5247