War on Sunday
THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY
You will not have forgotten last year's cele- brated fight for the heavyweight championship of the News of the World. In the red corner, Battling Bob Maxwell; in the blue corner, Roaring Rupe Murdoch. You all remember the outcome. But I remember something else. Almost before the beaten Bob had wiped the resin off his boots, and quit the ring, some- body wrote a profile of his victorious opponent.
In it they said that one of Mr Murdoch's Australian papers, the Sydney Truth, laid claim to the title of the worst paper in the world. Its salacity was such, I gathered, that by com- parison the dear old News of the World looked like a parish magazine, perhaps even looked like the family newspaper Sir William Carr always deluded himself into believing it actually was. The thought then crossed my mind that it would be interesting to see what effect Mr Murdoch's arrival in Bouverie Street would have on its new acquisition. Are we just beginning to see that effect?
Although the News of the World was once the great Sunday sexpot, it seemed to me that of recent years it had begun to tone down a little.
But now I begin to think we're getting back to square one. For what have we had lately? Witchcraft, as weary and worn-out an idea as you could want—or, more probably, not want. Illustrated by lots of nudes, in the most hilarious poses—backs carefully turned, or somebody holding something just where it thankfully obscures a vital part of the anatomy —the series has been one of the greatest un- intentional jokes of recent years. And the week before last we had an account of the sex lives of the Victorians, mainly extracts from a new the replacement for Mrs Dale—"The Prince of Wales's Diary".' book, and illustrated by two highly comic pic- tures, which weren't even from the book at all, but were stills from a forthcoming film.
These events (and others) suggested to me that Mr Murdoch had decided that -the Mws of the World was getting too staid, and this was the way to liven it up. But there are a few other things that suggest the change—if indeed there is one; it may be just my fevered imaginings—is symptomatic of something else a little bit deeper.
The first point is that the week the NoW ran its yarn about Victorian sex life, the People did the same. Since the editor of the People, Mr Robert Edwards, is always proclaiming that his paper is a serious publication, concerned with exposing what is wrong with life today, I couldn't at first work out why he had apparently copied the News of the World in telling us what was wrong with life yesterday.
Then, last Sunday, the front page of the People carried a piece that crowed as cockily as you're ever likely to hear. It said 'A great fuss is being made over some figures. . . . These figures show that the People is now the most widely-read newspaper in Britain. . . . Who is making the fuss? . . . You've guessed it—the News of the World. They've made' such k a hullabaloo that the experts are going to do their sums all over again to see whether they've got them right.' Still chortling, the People went on: 'In fact, in one way and the other, the News of the World has been in quite a tizzy lately. They got into such a flap over our series on Victorian sex last Sunday that they quoted long extracts from the author's manu- scripts without permission. Now they are in serious trouble with the author and his agent for alleged breach of contract.'
So that's it, is it? The People is the most widely-read paper and the News of the World is being forced to go in for the sexy stuff in an attempt to catch up, eh? Unfortunately for that beautifully simple explanation.; I remem- bered the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the last half of 1968—indeed, the News of the World had reminded me of them a fort- night ago. And they gave the NoW as having the greatest circulation, having actually in- creased its lead on the People during 1968.
As I sat back to try to work it out, my eye fell on the following words on the back page of the Sunday Mirror: 'Figures published yes- terday show that more people aged between sixteen and forty-four read the Sunday Mirror than any other Sunday paper, including those with huge sales sustained by lurid revelations.'
And what was this in the Sunday Express about that paper's 'unrivalled' pulling power? - • I have a mind that boggles very easily. It 'boggled. There was only one thing to do and that was to go back to the figures the People was talking about last Sunday. They appeared in Campaign, which is a trade paper of the newspaper industry. They revealed that every- body is correct—just one more demonstration that you can prove anything with figures. The crux, of course, is the difference between 'cir- culation' and 'readership.' And the relevant readership survey had shown that though, in the second half of 1968, the News of the World sold 704,366 more copies than the People each week, 99,000 fewer folk actually, read it than read the People.
This has angered the News of the World executives, who have none too gently suggested that something has gone wrong in the calcula- tions. What they actually said was, 'There is an anomaly beyond the limits of tolerance in
such matters,' if you see what they mean. Hence the -revisions, or at any- rate the re- checking, that the People referred to so airily.
Well, it doesn't really concern us. Except for one thing. If it means we are seeing the start of a circulation war—and remember all Sunday circulations fell last fall, except for the Sunday Telegraph—then God help us. At a time when the quality papers in general have been doing so well, I should hate to find we are heading back to the days of Randolph Churchill's creation, the Pornographer-Royal, the days when the drive for readers produced some of the worst Sunday papers seen this cen- tury. For that period proved that, whatever memory's golden haze suggests. the Good Old Days, as usual, were definitely the Bad Old Days.
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