Press
Wheels of fortune
Bill Grundy
I have never been completely sure whether Hadrian built his wall to keep the Scots out or the English in. Both seem good ideas to me. I must confess though that I don't normally think much about Hadrian or his wall, but this week he and it loomed large in my mind because I've been spending a good deal of time in 'Caledonia stern and wild.' This would be of little relevance to a column about the press, were it not for the fact that my Highland rambles meant that I have not seen a newspaper for the last seven days, and if that isn't relevant, I don't know what is.
Strictly speaking though, I tell a lie, because the winds of the Cairngorms did blow one journal my way. It was, most improbably, Motor Cycle News, a publication of whose existence I had, I regret to say, long been ignorant. In a sense I am still ignorant of it, because though I now know it exists, I still haven't the faintest idea of what it is going on about. The lead story, for example, was headed 'Ton Plus Ten TT?' After studying it for some time, I have come to the conclusion that 1 simply do not knoW the language the 'World's top-selling motor cycle newspaper' is written in. For all I know, it could be Hindi, although I suppose it's more likelY to be Honda.
I made a careful study of the paper — well there was nothing else to read — and I learnt quitea lot. To start with, its circulation is large — last year's July-December figure was 136,336, according t° the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which is a lot of sevenpences. It, is published in Kettering ano printed in Peterborough for reasons which escape me. It is forty-eight-page tabloid, it plenty of high-quality colour Plc. tures, and is chock full of what seem to me to be amazingly boring stories about motor bikes. 13t11 I must be wrong. I know that OA don't care about motor bikes an:, I don't either, but at least 136,1w people do. Mind you the literal taste does not seem to be all tha,., high, if the writing is anything t" go by. Words like 'fantastic' are scattered freely through the Pages one at least of its contributore does not seem to know 0, difference between confident'Ys and confidentially, and the leader have all the simplistic style of tb`, Daily Express and its Sunda)A stablemate. They are even heat; 'Opinion,' so perhaps resemblance is not surprislogs Here is one in its entirety: "It nr taken almost a year since tr'''.‘it became compulsory wear, VAT has now been removed froi",.. motorcyclists' crash helmet'e Removed that is, if you buy which confirms (sic) either to P'ti 2001 or BS 1869. If however Y° decide that you want one which confirms (sic) to 2495 (the car racing standard) then you will still have to pay VAT. Crazy isn't it?" Well yes, if you put it like that (and that's how Motor Cycle News did put it).
I honestly didn't think anybody could write as much about motor bikes as this journal does, and I certainly didn't think anybody would want to read it. It all goes to show just how out of touch one can get. There are times when it is easy to forget that 'crisis in Fleet Street' means just that, and only that. The national press may be in a mess, but the local press and specialist journals like the Motor Cycle News (or even Our Feathered Friends for all I know) are doing very nicely indeed. The MCN, as its logo calls itself, is simply packed with advertisements, both display and classified. Indeed the back pages bear a very strong resemblance to an Exchange and Mart designed esPecially for the lads in leather. (Incidentally, if you've got a B25 Star Fire head you want to get rid of, ring Whitby 2238 will you? There's a fella there who's desperate for one.) With 136,000 sevenpences coming in each week, and the nice Juicy income from all those ads, Motor Cycle News is clearly in a Position several national newspapers might envy. For the position in Fleet Street is still parlous. And it isn't going to be improved by the discount war that has just broken out and which will involve all newspapers in time. Bigger discounts for wholesalers in an attempt to increase the Sun's circulation — already a staggering 3.3 million — will put pressure on the other nationals who will find they have to do the same. Yet if they do, their financial position, already very shaky in certain cases, may actually collapse altogether. Only the Sun, already pressing the Mirror hard (remember Rupert Murdoch's dig at Hugh Cudlipp, "I bet you reach four million on your way down before we do on our way up"), is likely to come out of it satisfactorily, as a lot of Fleet Street accountants are uneasily aware. Circulation wars are just like other wars; someone usually gets killed and one or two likely funeral notices could be prepared right now.
But how come the national press is so frail while the rest of the industry is doing nicely? The answer. I'm afraid, is that nasty word 'monopoly.' Few places now have competing morning or evening papers. Mergers have done their work and not all of it is dirty. The chance of reading an alternative point of view may have disappeared, but the chances of being able to continue reading the remaining point of view are very much higher, thanks to the stronger financial position of the survivors. There are other con.; tributory factors to the state of the provincial press, of course, but I think monopoly is the main one. It is paradoxical that what has always been thought of as the greatest menace to a free and varied press may be the only tiring that will enable some form of press to survive. There's a lesson for Fleet Street somewhere in all that, but at present I don't think many of us are ready to learn it. But the day is not far off when we will have to.
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