Press
Evening papers
Bill Grundy
Maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner, that I don't love London so. Every time I arrive back I look at all those serried ranks of solid citizens in the Underground, packed so tightly that if they were sardines the RSPCA would have something to say about it. You'd wonder how they ever find room to open a newspaper on their way home. No wonder they prefer to read a tabloid. You didn't know they did? You thought they bought about three times as many broadsheet Evening Newses as tabloid Standardr.o. So did I. Sc did the News. But circumstances alter cases, as the blind beggar said when he took off his dark glasses to watch a mini-skirt go by. And now I read, in a full page ad in the Sunday Times, that "Most Londoners prefer to read a tabloid," the odd thing being that it is the Evening News that inserted the ad. They concede the oddity with the next line in the ad: "Yet most Londoners read the Evening News."
In case your brain is reeling — mine most certainly is — I think we should take,a deep breath and start
• again. And the place to start is yet another full page ad in.the Sunday Times, again paid for by the Evening News. There, all is revealed. It says: "From September 16, 1974 the Evening News will be sold in tabloid size, after eighty-six years as a broadsheet. It is the most significant thing to come out of Fleet Street since the new Daily Mail was launched in 1971." (If you think that was significant, that makes two of you, the other one being Mr. Vere Harmsworth, chairman of Associated Newspapers, the owners of both the Mail and the News.)
The ad says: "There is no question . about it. More Londoners in 1974 would rather read a paper in the smaller 'tabloid' size. Provided the content was right. We've proved that with the Daily Mail. Relaunched tabloid size in 1971 amid the gloomy prognostications of Fleet Street, it is now attracting Express readers by the thousands." I take leave to doubt that, but go on. "All the outstanding Fleet Street successes of the past few years have proved the appeal of the tabloid-sized newspaper. The Sun is a shining example. The Daily Mail speaks for itself. The Mirror is still the world's biggest national daily paper .... And, if further proof were needed, we asked the people of London. Nearly threequarters of a massive research sample said that, given the choice, they would rather their evening paper was a tabloid. But only if the content was right. In the light of all this you may wonder how the Evening News continues to hold its dominating position", the ad percipiently remarks. Don't tell me, Let me guess. Because you've got the content right? "We've got the content right," Jolly good. So let's have a look at the content of these ads, shall we?
The first thing to observe is that, the Daily Mail has not been the roaring success the ads would have you believe. In fact, if you remember that it now incorporates the Daily Sketch, the Mail's circulation has fallen since it was launched, since its one and three quarter million sales are nowhere near the combined sales of the Sketch and the old Mail. Which was broadsheet, not tabloid. But taking it as a separate paper, and forgetting the past, the Mail's success story is rather like one of those penny rockets I used to stick in milk bottles on wet Bonfire Nights. A fizzle, a slight lift-off, and -a whimper rather than a bang. Only nine months ago members of the staff were called together to hear the stirring news that the downward financial graph had started to level off. This was apparently something to celebrate! The financial position of the paper remains parlous (not a word I use often, but a lovely one, and just right here). The next thing to observe is that the broadsheet Evening News, so long the money maker in Associated Newspapers' London outfit, able to keep the Mail afloat (much as the Manchester Evening News keeps the Guardian afloat), has had a sad attack of the falling sales lately. And this, coupled with the enormous rise in costs affecting all papers — newsprint in particular, which accounts for about a third of total production costs and which has gone up 300 per cent in the last three years — has made the accountants reach for their worry beads and Librium rather more fre
quently than usual.
Mind you, Associated Newspapers don't just own papers. They own property as well. Which they are now trying to get rid of, fast. The best example is Carmelite House, where I used regularly to get lest until I learnt to drop grains of rice as I wandered around. It lies between the Victoria Embankment and Tudor Street, which is a pretty prime site, near enough to the City, to Blackfriars Bridge, to Westminster and wherever, to make it highly desirable. It is true that it has all mod, inconveniences, but if redeveloped it could bring Mr Harmsworth and his fellow worriers a cool £25 million or so. That would do the bank balance no end of good, especially as Associated have just done up, and let to the Government, their old Evening News offices, Harmsworth House.
Mr Vere HarmsWorth recently sent all members of his staff a nine-page memorandum telling them just how near Queer Street they would be if they didn't all pull their socks up, cut costs, increase productivity, tighten their belts, stand up straight, and stop fidgetting. These are hard times for Fleet Street, and it's obvious that far from being a move in response to readers' demands, the change from broadsheet to tabloid has been very much dictated by financial necessity. The heart-searching that must have gone on puts me in mind of the Duke of York in one of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. He, you will remember, was forever rushing around in a tizzy muttering, "Somewhat must be done." The trouble was that he never knew just what that somewhat was. One can only hope that the planners of the new News do.
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