MEDIA STUDIES
If Hollick really is going to sell the Express to
the Barclays, he'd better look lively
STEPHEN GLOVER
Then the horse's mouth got in touch with me, if I can put it that way. I mean some- one even more central to the drama than Andrew Neil. He says the Barclays have indeed made a bid of £75 million for Express newspapers, which has been turned down. They might be prepared to go as far as £100 million if the figures stack up and rigorous due diligence uncovers no terrible secrets.
There we have it. I said last week that if the Barclays did buy the paper, I would have to eat my hat. I am eyeing it now a lit- tle uneasily. Readers may recall that a cou- ple of months ago I doubted whether the Barclays were about to go on a spending spree. Aidan Barclay — son of Sir David, one of the twin brothers — had even lis- tened to a bid for the family's newspaper interests. Surely they were not about to buy Express newspapers. Well, now it seems they are.
Or are they? I am willing to eat my hat, if I have to, but making a bid for a newspaper does not amount to buying it. As far as I can gather, Sir David is keen to get it. Mr Neil is in a state of hyper-excitement. Aidan Barclay is almost certainly less eager, but for the moment is borne along by the enthusiasm of his father and Mr Neil. If there is a doubt in the back of his mind and this is pure guesswork — it might be that the purchase price is only the very beginning of the financial commitment that any purchaser of the Daily and Sunday Express and Daily Star would have to make. The papers need tens and tens of millions of pounds if they are to make their way in the world once more.
So I do still wonder whether, when it comes to it, the Barclays will go ahead. Do they have that much money to invest or, as it may be, lose? On the other hand, it can't be said that other potential buyers are queuing up, though perhaps one will still emerge. I find it very difficult to believe that Mohamed Fayed should be taken seri- ously, and almost as hard to credit that Rosie Boycott, editor of the Daily Express, is backing him. It is true that she left the building in floods of tears after she had read about the Barclays' bid, and she is said to feel badly let down by Lord Hollick, chief executive of United News and Media, the parent company of Express newspapers. But surely she would not be so silly as to get into bed with a man like Fayed.
Lord Hollick, it can scarcely be denied, has been a great let-down as a proprietor. He has starved the papers of resources, though perhaps not to the extent his detrac- tors allege. He delivered the Tory Daily Express into the hands of New Labour, with the enthusiastic assistance of Ms Boycott. Now he is entertaining a bid from the Bar- clay brothers who, if possibly not as right- wing as is generally made out, would expect Mr Neil to return the paper to its anti-euro and Unionist roots. (Number Ten is affect- ing insouciance at the prospect of the Bar- clays, but it would lose a pro-euro cheer- leader.) As Lord Hollick surveys his shat- tered empire, he broods in his bunker and doesn't tell anyone anything, not even Ms Boycott. This is hard, given her commit- ment and that of her staff.
I rather hope the Barclays get it, and let my hat be damned. Mr Neil should edit the Daily Express himself, rather than trying to pull the strings of some cipher. If he still has the energy, and the Barclays have the money to invest, they could make the paper something again. The Daily Mail would rel- ish the fight. I believe that Lord Hollick this is also pretty much a guess — might accept £130 million, so if the Barclays are already prepared to offer £100 million they may not be so far apart. But for God's sake get on with it. Three years ago the paper was probably worth £200 million. In six months that figure might be £80 million. Sell before it's too late.
Six weeks ago I suggested that Greg Dyke's MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Festival presaged a further dumbing down of BBC1. The BBC's direc- tor-general had announced that the Nine o'clock News would move to ten o'clock. This was presented as an enlightened change. His argument, and that of Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of the BBC, is that another hour will enable the BBC to include more political and American news. It is a pretty marginal benefit. We all know that the real reason for the later time is that the BBC wants to run its dramas and comedies at the very peak of prime time, uninterrupted by anything as tedious as news. I do wish they would not try to deceive us.
A couple of developments concerning Panorama confirm the trend. First we hear that Mariella Frostrup, the Norwegian beauty, is to present at least one edition of the programme. I must confess to having mixed feelings about this, but I think we can be sure that if Mariella were not so delightful to the eye she would not have been asked to undertake this task. Then we are told that Panorama will be moved from its Monday spot to 10.15 on Sunday evening, generally regarded as a dead time if you want to pull in the viewers. The pro- gramme had already been shunted from its prime-time position at eight o'clock on Monday evening, and I imagine that its new Sunday slot will turn out to be a mere stag- ing-post before it is banished to the outer reaches of BBC2, where it will be watched by insomniacs and their pets.
Once upon a time millions of people used to watch Panorama on a Monday evening. Now fewer than two million do. Competi- tion from other terrestrial channels and satellite television has whittled down the numbers over the years. But by moving the programme to increasingly antisocial slots the BBC is accelerating the process. It is turning current affairs into a minority inter- est. In so doing Mr Dyke undermines the case for public-service broadcasting and the licence fee. If no room can be found for cur- rent affairs on the BBC's main television channel, what distinguishes the corporation from its rivals, and why should it receive guaranteed funding from the licence-payer? How odd that all this should happen when an edition of Panorama identifying the Omagh bombers is making waves. Perhaps this will be the last time the programme impinges on our national life before it is simply forgotten.
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