Mr Piers Morgan wishes to be serious. It would be churlish not to wish him every success
STEPHEN GLOVER
Very successful papers may tinker but they do not generally relaunch themselves. Relaunches are really a sign of weakness. Of course most of them pass without notice, largely because they are too timid, and have no effect on circulation. It is sometimes a case of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Occasionally newspaper managements are bold, and relaunches do have a lasting effect. The conversion of the then troubled Daily Mail from broadsheet to tabloid in 1971 was one such example, and ushered in a period of prosperity. Another was the complete redesign of the Guardian when its executives felt (absurd as it may seem now) that their paper was threatened by the fledgling Independent.
Two newspapers have relaunched themselves in the past ten days: the Mirror and the Independent. Both have suffered a long-term decline in sales, though the position of the Independent is much more parlous. The Mirror's makeover is rather dramatic. Its editor, Piers Morgan, has got rid of the red-top masthead and retitled the paper the Daily Mirror. He has reinvented the (justly?) famous Cassandra column, and hired a bevy of classy writers. All this is in line with his new commitment, following 11 September, to serious popular journalism. The Daily Mirror is harking back to the 1950s when, under the direction of Hugh Cudlipp, a man whom Mr Morgan has not revered in the past, it sold nearly five million copies a day.
Its average daily circulation in the six months to March 2002 was 2,133,996. Mr Morgan became editor in September 1995, and in the six months from March to August of that year the paper sold an average of 2,553,523. So it has mislaid a fair number of buyers under his watch, as it has been shedding sales more or less year by year since 1970. Mr Morgan's standing with his employers does not seem to have suffered, probably because the Daio., Mirror's main rival, the Sun, has been losing readers at a similar rate. Indeed, the whole 'red-top' market has been contracting for the past 25 years, though the Daily Star, by far the weakest player in this sector, has been rallying over the past 12 months by supplying a noticeably higher count of tit 'n' bum.
The Daily Mirror's relaunch should be seen in the context of its own decline, and the decline of its market. Mr Morgan seems to be saying that sensational, celebrity-driven journalism is not working. But will a more upmarket mix be any more successful? I don't know. When newspapers are in longterm decline it is always very difficult to turn them round. Moreover, with his reputation for frivolity and cutting corners Mr Morgan seems an unlikely Cudlipp. But if he is sincere in his venture, there are very few people who would not wish him to succeed.
The Independent's makeover is far more cautious. Most of its rival broadsheets have rubbished the redesign. There is something a bit mean-spirited about running beastly pieces about an enfeebled rival. All in all, I would say that the relaunch is broadly neutral. It makes sense to bring back the leader pages into the main paper, and the news pages have a more dignified look. On the other hand, it is obviously a mistake to have a two-column contents box on the front page, since it restricts freedom of manoeuvre, and the tag 'The Broader View' beneath the masthead is toe-curling.
Frankly, this is one of those relaunches that will be forgotten in a month, and it will have no effect whatsoever on sales. Since Simon Kelner became the paper editor's in May 1998, the headline circulation figure has remained roughly the same at around 225,000, but sales at full price have slipped a little to 190,000, and readership has continued to decline. (The Independent has lost 180,000 readers — not buyers — since 1997.) The paper stood in need of a far more radical relaunch than it has been given if it is to have any chance of recovery. The lack of inspiration should be chiefly blamed not on Mr Kelner, who must use the tools he has been given, but on its Irish owners, and in particular Tony O'Reilly, who seem to have no vision for the paper and are reluctant to invest in it.
Ihave been meaning to write about an amazing new book which, apart from an article in the Mail on Sunday, appears to have been ignored by the entire British press. Missing, Believed Wiped by Dick Fiddy (BFI) tells the story of the inadvertent or deliberate destruction of hundreds of British television programmes. These include episodes of Dr Who, Hancock's Half Hour, The Avengers, Dad's Army. Steptoe and Son and The Likely Lads. Fortunately, more highbrow programmes fared a little better, and the 1960s Shakespeare series Age of Kings, The Forsyte Saga and the 1965 version of A Passage to
India survive in their entirety should Greg Dyke's BBC ever wish to get round to showing them again. But among precious classics which have been lost are a 1966 production of A Farewell to Arms with Vanessa Redgrave and Donald Sutherland; a 1968 version of Hay Fever with Celia Johnson and Dennis Price; a 1956 Miss Julie with Mai Zetterling and Tyrone Power; and a 1972 Lady Windermere's Fan starring Coral Browne and Sian Phillips.
Mr Fiddy is rather kind to those television executives who wiped programmes. Part of his mission is to try to persuade people to search in their bottom drawers to see whether lost treasures can be found, and he probably calculates that handing out insults will not assist this process. Two episodes of Dad's Army have recently been unearthed. But one would have to be a very great optimist to imagine that more than a tiny minority of these lost programmes will ever be recovered. I can't be quite as forgiving as Mr Fiddy. Videotape, though initially very expensive, was developed in the late 1950s, and even before that there were other means of recording live programmes. Mr Fiddy suggests that television, particularly of the nonhighbrow sort, was regarded by executives as being ephemeral. But newspapers were similarly judged, and yet they have been filed and kept for posterity. A considerable act of cultural vandalism has taken place.
Are broadcasters censoring videos of Osama bin Laden? Last October they complained when the government asked them to treat a bin Laden production with circumspection, suggesting that the videotape contained coded messages to his followers. Since then there have been other videos of which we have been shown excerpts. The latest, shown only fleetingly earlier this week, depicts a mute bin Laden, apparently sitting in front of a mock rural landscape in a studio with his deputy, Ayman alZawahiri. Without offering any exegesis, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, suggests that this video is old. His theory has not been examined with any rigour. Does he suspect, or even know, that bin Laden is dead? I would like to have seen a panel of 'experts' deconstructing this latest offering. Broadcasters' apparent reluctance to give us the uncut Osama bin Laden makes me a little suspicious.
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