DOG-FIGHTS ARE GOOD FOR YOU
The press: Paul Johnson
on why competition sells more newspapers
IF NEW newspaper titles are created, do they simply give readers more choice or do they also significantly increase their num- ber? This is an important question at a time when it is comparatively easy to start a new paper but much harder to sell it. Entrep- reneurs launching a title naturally claim it fills a gap but the fury with which the incumbents resist the intruder reflects the fear of cannibalisation. The Independent, with average sales of 422,679 (October), a 6.5 per cent rise on last year, is felt to have increased the total quality daily market, which is now at a daily total of 2,685,509, with the Daily Telegraph selling 1,100,053, the Guardian 440,578, the Times 433,051 and the Financial Times 289,148.
This, however, may be in part illusory since the Independent, by launching a Saturday magazine, introduced a kind of weekend inflation of reading matter which has had a severe weakening effect on the Sunday quality market. Not only did peo- ple begin to buy fewer broadsheet Sundays but, confronted by formidable papers on both days of the weekend, they also became much more selective in their read- ing — a fact to which, I suspect, advertisers are going to tumble one of these days. To give an example: I once scrutinised the book reviews in all the national qualities pretty carefully. Not any more. I am now very eclectic and there are some weeks when I don't bother with them at all, simply reading the Times Literary Supple- ment. I believe that, ceteris paribus, most if not all readers are responding in this way to a superfluity of print. They are not so much readers any more as dippers.
This being so, and the serious Sundays being most affected by the expansion of the quality output, the figures produced by the first impact of the Sunday Correspondent are surprising. Its first audited monthly sale shows a figure of 359,359, an asto- nishingly good one in the circumstances and only just below its calculated break- even figure of 360,000. This figure is for October and, according to the UK Press Gazette, estimates of more recent sales indicate a drop since of 40,000, with a ninth-week figure between 300,000 and 315,000. All the same what the audited figures show is that the new paper has been well received by a significant proportion of readers in its target area. Thus, granted enough money for promotion, hard selling and, most important of all, editorial con- tent capable of making an impact each successive week, there seems no reason why the new paper should not establish itself permanently over the 300,000 mark. These are of course big provisos, and if the Sunday Correspondent eventually goes down it will be, I think, because it has not met the third of them by developing an editorial character sufficiently distinctive from its competitors. But I would now rate its chances of survival 50:50, perhaps a little more.
Where has its 350,000-plus come from? Granted the general weakness of the Sun- day quality market, the existing titles have not done too badly. Indeed, according to the figures, the Sunday Times has done pretty well. Its six-monthly average figure, May-October, at 1,268,955, represents a loss of 71,274 over the same period for the previous year, a drop of 5.3 per cent (as compared to percentage losses of 8.8 for the Observer and 8.4 for the Sunday Telegraph). However, its October figure, 1,297,567, is only 6,348 below its Septem- ber figure, 1,303,915, which seems to suggest the Correspondent has had only marginal impact on ST sales. By contrast, the Observer turned in an October figure of 628,792, as against 659,773 for Septem- `You know what I miss? — Jewish humour.' ber, a loss of 30,981, while the average sales for the Sunday Telegraph were 653,018 (September) and 612,515 (Octo- ber), a loss of 40,503. These are serious falls but, granted the current state of both papers, by no means as bad as might have been expected, and it is likely that both have recovered some sales this month. As for the mid-market Sundays, the Mail on Sunday turned in an October figure of 1,933,931, against 1,956,259, indicating a loss to the Correspondent of 22,328, but the Sunday Express, a big loser if you take the six-monthly May-October figures com- pared with 1988, dropping 9.3 per cent of sales, actually increased its October sales over September by 63,593, the result of a sustained and so far effective circulation push. So there the Correspondent made no inroads at all.
What, then, do the figures show about cannibalisation? If we tot up the losses suffered by the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday during October, compared with the previous month, they come to a little over 100,000 in all. And this takes no account of the big sales increase registered by the Sunday Express during the month. Hence we must conclude that the Sunday Correspondent plucked something like a quarter of a million readers out of the thin air — no doubt in many cases by persuading them to buy an additional Sunday paper.
These extra sales and new readers are produced by all kinds of factors: publicity, especially on television, aroused by the appearance of a new title, special efforts by all players in the market to do their best, pressure on wholesalers and retailers, a general goading of journalists to turn in good copy, more money spent on editorial effort, and on promotion and advertising. This heightening of activity, the aroma, as it were, of the competitive principle in action, gets the nostrils of the public twitching and so broadens the appetite for products in that particular field. The effect, of course, may only be temporary. But the Independent's impact on the quality daily market suggests otherwise and it may be that the coming of the Correspondent, with the Sunday version of the Independent next year, will have the net effect of expanding the Sunday quality market, rather than producing a casualty or two. The commer- cial moral seems to be that new titles, made possible by the crushing of the unions and the Wapping revolution, are not just a general sign of creative health but also stimulate public interest and are therefore excellent for the financial well- being of the whole industry. Dog does eat dog in national newspapers and cannibal- ism is a fact of life: but periodical dog- fights are good for all. They are certainly fun to watch.
Jock Bruce-Gardyne is recovering from an operation and will resume his column on 9 December.
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