Observermess
SIR,—It is odd that Mr. Booker should be so con- vinced that the Observer's ship is sinking when it was only a few months ago that he was asking for work on 'that dreadful rag' the Observer colour magazine.
The truth, of course, is that the ship is very buoyant. Both our circulation and advertisement
experience since the launching of the colour maga- ,' 't zine have far exceeded anyone's expectations. In the first year of its existence the Observer colour magazine will have carried well over twice the num- ber of pages of advertising carried by the Sunday Times magazine in its first year. Moreover, our bookings for the last four months of this year are also more than double those of a year earlier— and this after a 10 per cent increase in advertisement rates.
Our circulation experience has been no less en- couraging. Our June figure reached 835,000 copies— almost 5,000 more than May 1965 and 125,000 more than June 1964. Two readership surveys carried out in recent weeks indicate further significant rises since the initial post-magazine upsurge, despite a penny increase in price in the interval. An NOP survey Conducted last autumn gave us 2,294,000 readers. Another survey carried out by NOP in the last -two months shows our readership now standing at 2.453,000. Even the IPA survey, with which we have not always seen eye to eye in the past, gives us a sharp increase in the second quarter of this Year compared with the previous six months.
If this is an Observermess, long may it continue.
The Observer Limited, 160 Queen Victoria Street. EC4
TRISTAN JONES
PS: I will not bother to comment on the rest of Mr. Booker's idle speculations except to say that We are not seeking and have no seed to seek funds from any quarter.
[Christopher Booker writes: 'Poor Mr. Jones. I trust that he arid his colleagues are consoled by such statistical whistling in the dark. 1 would personally have been more impressed by the simple statement that the Observer magazine is making a profit. Or is at least breaking even. Or even that it has any firm Prospect of breaking even. 'The Observer must beware, however, of this habit trying °f .9 to imply that I only criticise it to avenge some personal grievance. The fact is that, at the end of last year, they happened to be offered third refusal of an idea for a strip cartoon for which I was going to write the words. I have praised many newspapers against which I have far greater "grievances" than that. Quite apart from which, the last time they wheeled out this charge was to lend authority to a denial of my forecast that Anthony Sampson would IeP, lace Michael Davie as editor of a certain "dread- ful rag!. As one who hates drowning kittens, I can °oil/ say that it pains me to point out who was right.'
Editor, Spectator.]
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