TODAY'S CLEAN CASUALTY
The press: Paul Johnson
on what makes a mid-market tabloid tick
WHAT makes a successful newspaper these days? Looking at Today, edited on Rupert Murdoch's behalf by that dour but shrewd Ulsterman, David Montgomery, I conclude that it is stress on the Three Hs Housing, Health and Heritage. Today also makes intelligent use of colour, now im- proving steadily in quality and increasingly indispensable for tabloids. Equally it be- nefits, in all kinds of unseen ways, from the enormous cost advantages which Murdoch secured over his rivals by achieving a decisive victory over the unions. But the editorial pitch for the minds and hearts of middle-market readers, affluent, keen on money but anxious to stay alive, is clear. Today plays up to the national obsession with house prices, calls itself 'your Proper- ty Newspaper of the Year', publishes a mass of news about housing trends and runs a `Housie Competition' in which readers compete for a 'superb £189,000 restored country cottage' nestling 'in one third of an acre of beautiful Cheshire countryside'. It runs an 'Antiques Road- show', also appealing to the acquisitive instinct, and dealing with the rising value of artefacts, once dismissed as junk, likely to be found in middle-income households. The latest stress — to be found in other upmarket tabloids too — is on the live- longer-look-younger rage for diets, health foods, organic products and exercise. This is the range of interests which has. made Edwina Currie the best-known politician in the country after Mrs Thatcher, and popu- lar newspaper editors are at last discover- ing that concern for the body beautiful what I call the Clean Carnality — can sell as many papers as old-fashioned sex, not- ably absent from Montgomery's pages.
Certainly, the ascent of Today is remark- able. The latest ABC figures covering the second half of 1988 show that it rose from an average sale in 1987 of 339,705 to 548,362 in 1988, a dramatic increase of over 61 per cent. The paper claims that, for the week ending 7 January, there was a further rise to 581,432. The total market for popular national dailies grew by only 1.12 per cent in the second half of 1988. Increases were also recorded by the out- rageous but unstoppable Sun up 173,719 copies (4.29 per cent) to 4,219,052, and the Daily Mirror, up 28,585 (0.91 per cent), which like its highly successful Sun- day companion, is making a feature of high-quality colour printing. Hence the bulk of the losses came from the disaster- prone Star, which dropped 170,307 copies during the period and in December barely averaged a sale over 900,000. But the Daily Express, down 53,406 (3.16 per cent) at 1,637,066, and the Daily Mail, down 51,062 (2.82 per cent) at 1,758,689, were also seriously hit.
The plight of the Star, unable to climb out of its demoralising cycle of decline, and the continuing failure of the Daily Express to regain lost ground — it is now well over 100,000 behind the Mail — draws attention to the poor circulation record of Lord Stevens's national newspaper empire. For the Sunday Express is also doing badly in its confrontation with the Mail on Sunday and its brilliant colour mag, You. The Express had the largest percentage fall (8.77) of any Sunday national, dropping an average of 195,533 copies to 2,032,798, barely 100,000 above the Mail on Sunday, which put on a further 65,303 copies (3.52 per cent). The Mail on Sunday now claims that it sold 2,119,000 copies last week, putting it nearly 100,000 in front of the Sunday Express.
However, the real winners in the Sunday game were the two Murdoch papers. The 'We're under attack from an active service unit of the IBA.' News of the World rose by a massive 264,324 extra copies (5.19 per cent) to reach over 5,360,000. The Sunday Times had exactly the same percentage gain, adding 64,863 copies to make 1,314,504. It claimed this week it is now selling nearly 1,400,000, some 35,000 more than the combined sales of its two quality rivals. Certainly the Observer and the Sunday Telegraph are both in difficulty, though for different reasons. The Observer has to carry the burden of Tiny Rowland's own- ership and it has just lost its only really heavyweight editorial executive, Anthony Howard, who resigned as Deputy Editor for reasons he is too good-natured to reveal. It reads to me now like a paper with low morale which does not quite know what it is supposed to be doing. Indeed the Sunday Telegraph, with its much more original and energetic editorial character, showed signs of overtaking the Observer until, abruptly last September, it was strip- ped of its colour magazine by a manage- ment decision. This has proved, as I warned in this column, a serious error. The Sunday Telegraph lost an average of 45,305 copies (6.13 per cent) in the last six months of 1988, bringing it down to 693,431, as opposed to the Observer's 722,008 (a drop of 5.55 per cent). Most of the Telegraph's losses occurred after the magazine was withdrawn, the pathetic 7 Days being no substitute.
Moreover, giving the Sunday's magazine to the Daily Telegraph, to help it meet stiff competition from the Independent on Saturday, does not seem to have worked in terms of circulation. The ABC figures show that during the second half of 1988 the Independent put on a further 26,216 copies (7.26 per cent) to reach 387,103, while the Daily Telegraph dropped 41,732 (3.57 per cent) to 1,127,674. (What these figures do not show, I ought to add, is that the Telegraph group has benefited finan- cially from the switch since it can charge much higher magazine advertising rates on the basis of its daily's bigger circulation.) The Guardian has also suffered badly from the Independent's competition, dropping 22,286 (4.84 per cent) to 438,054. Like the Observer, it seems to have lost its way and is now less than 2,000 copies a day ahead of the Times (at 436,298). The Times, indeed, dropped only 11,000 copies to the Indepen- dent's competition, though the general judgment is that it has lost something much more valuable in the long run — the title to be Britain's Top Person's Paper, the old Thunderer at whose authoritative tones the ruling class trembles. On the other hand, the Independent has not yet secured it. The title, in fact, is still there for the taking, and it is surprising that the Daily Telegraph, under its vigorous new owner, Conrad Black, is not making a more determined effort to grab it. Of course there are reasons, but as my wife sometimes says to me: 'Haven't you made enough enemies for the time being?'
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