The new tabloid 'Times lite' is in competition with the Mail
The decision to kill off the broadsheet Times is a momentous one. The Times a tabloid! Who would have believed it two years ago? The paper has been almost exactly the same shape since 1822. Before that it had been smaller, though not so small as a tabloid. From 1811 there had been five columns in the paper. The length of the column was increased in 1812, 1816 and 1822, and the column widened in 1813. These changes produced the shape familiar to us. Now the broadsheet has gone, presumably for ever, and we are left with a tabloid. This, by the way, is exactly the same size as the Sun, which is about three quarters of an inch shorter than the Daily Mail. That extra length makes quite a difference — and helps to explain why the tabloid Times looks cramped and squat.
No one seems properly to have examined the question as to why Rupert Murdoch, proprietor of the Times, should have favoured the smaller tabloid form. We know that the Independent set the ball rolling by adopting the smaller format, and that the limes followed suit. Murdoch discovered that the new shape was favoured by the young and by commuters, and after two or three years of sales decline the paper has achieved a modest circulation increase over the past 12 months. However, the extra editorial and distribution costs involved in producing two editions became prohibitively expensive, and although a minority of readers, mostly older ones, were known to dislike the smaller format, the decision was taken to go entirely tabloid.
Is that all there is to it — or might there be more fundamental reasons behind what has happened? Here is a theory. Murdoch's cash cow in this country remains the Sun. But the paper is a worry, having lost some 20 per cent of its sales since its heyday. Under its present editor, Rebekah Wade, the trend has accelerated. My guess would be that Ms Wade's days may be numbered unless she can do something about that, though Murdoch does not like getting rid of editors. But he is concerned about the long-term circulation decline of the paper on which much of his fortune is still based. One problem is that the working class, on whose readership the Sun overwhelmingly depends, is gradually shrinking as we all become more middle
class. This, though, is a very slow process.
The newspaper Murdoch fears, as does the whole of Fleet Street, is the Daily Mail. (Here I should declare my interest as a Mail columnist.) The paper has increased its circulation by some 40 per cent since 1992, though without making much progress over the past year or two. It now has more readers in the AB socio-economic class than any other daily newspaper. But it also has lots of Cls and Ds. It looks both ways. In Murdoch's mind, and a lot of other minds, it resembles an ominous substance in a science fiction novel which oozes into every nook and cranny, carrying everything before it, and admitting of no resistance. It is a frightening thought for Murdoch that the Mail might one day ooze into the territory of his prize asset, the Sun.
Everyone accepts. I think, that the tabloid Times is a more popular newspaper than the broadsheet version. My esteemed colleague Professor Roy Campbell-Greenslade has memorably called it 'Times lite' on account of its shorter articles and greater emphasis on celebrities and human-interest stories. Of course, the paper has been dumbing down for years, but the tabloid edition marks a definite lurch. Murdoch's intention is to engage with the Daily Mail in its upper reaches, and to stake out a battleground which will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for the Mail to contemplate looking the other way and stealing Sun readers. As things stand, the Times tabloid seems too weak a paper to present much of a danger to the Mail, but it need not remain so. You may be sure that Murdoch has his eyes on some of its AB readers. At the very least he will hope to bog down the Mail in a fight.
How does all this affect the Daily Telegraph? It has been advertising itself as a broadsheet on its front page every day since the Times went tabloid. (By the way, I should make clear to readers that I have no privileged information whatsoever about the Telegraph, which is owned by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, who are also proprietors of this magazine. I am relying solely on my wits.) The Telegraph's management hopes to attract some of those disgruntled Times readers who object to being made to buy a tabloid. This explains why it is promoting itself so energetically as a broadsheet, as well as blitzing newsagents with advertisements. But expectations are low, and some in management doubt whether the paper will attract as many as the 30,000 odd readers who, so recent research suggested, might switch from the Times. If the Telegraph were to put on a sizeable number of copies at the Times's expense, the likelihood would be that it would shelve all plans to go tabloid. But if there is no gain, the argument is hound to be reopened. There seems to be a feeling at the paper that with the whole world going tabloid the Daily Telegraph cannot afford to miss out, and that there is a historical inevitability that cannot be resisted. If the Telegraph does become a tabloid, that will only intensify the catfight that is shaping up between the Mail and the Times. In fact, my guess is that a tabloid Telegraph might worry the Mail more than a tabloid Times.
Several things have annoyed me this past week. One was this headline in the London Evening Standard about the Black Watch: 'Brits Go In'. I can see that the word 'Brits helped to fill the line, but surely no free-born Briton thinks of himself as a 'Brit'. Let Americans use the word if they must, but we should not.
Continuing in this Tunbridge Wells vein, I was even more exercised by this headline in the Independent: 'Revealed: war has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives'. This is poppycock. What they mean is that a study in the Lancet, which may or may not be accurate, has suggested 'that 100,000 people may have died in Iraq as a result of the war. The Independent allows its disapproval of he war (which I happen to share) to get in the way of a balanced presentation of the facts. On this occasion, the anti-war Guardian got it right with the headline: '100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study'.
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