The press
Game, set and match
Paul Johnson
In taking over Times Newspapers, Rupert Murdoch has got himself a very nice deal. He knocked down the £55 million asking price to a mere £12 million, and for this he has received (apart from the titles) property and machinery assets worth £25.9 million. This makes it, on paper at least, the biggest give-away since Rothermere got the News Chronicle for a song. It is true that Murdoch will have to fork out about £6 million in redundancy payments. But for this he gets continuity of production plus a hard agreement to end 563 full-time jobs (including 186 of the highest paid composing-room workers), and a big reduction in casual labour. At long last most of the new machinery in Grays Inn Road will come into use, though the NGA has not surrendered its divine right to keep journalists and advertising staff from setting copy. Strictly speaking, the 4,000-or-so jobs in Times Newspapers could have been cut by one third, and Murdoch has by no means hit the targets he laid down when he began negotiations. But the de-manning agreement he secured is at least as good as the deal when he took over the Sun, which made it possible to turn that bedraggled failure into a highly profitable monster. The one aspect he may come to regret is that, if he makes a real killing, he will have to surrender 25 per cent of the profits over £20 million to Thomson's. But this stipulation is only to last 10 years, and as the really big money will begin to roll in (if ever) only in the second half of the Eighties, Murdoch will not have to endure this painful disgorging process for long. He has done it again. Or has he? The aspect of the agreement which gives me most pleasure is Murdoch's success in pulling the three supplements out of the cauldron in Grays Inn Road. This should ensure their survival, though Murdoch will have to do something about their editorial staffs which, by the standards of weeklies of their class, are over-large and overpaid. The sooner these papers have their own individual offices, far from the virulent unionism of Fleet Street, the sooner will their quality improve and their future become secure. As for the newspapers, all will depend on how wholeheartedly the agreements made last week are honoured. Murdoch made rings round the Sunday Times journalists, and his conceding of two places to journalists (whom he will pick himself) on the main board should not cost him any sleep. But he has not yet got on top of The Times chapel and his ability to do so will depend in great part on appointing the right editor. He should ignore the fancy names being hawked around and pick a hard-boiled task master with a proven record for breaking heads and a relish for sweating it out in the building until the last edition goes to press, like Delane in the old days.
Even more decisive will be Murdoch's ability to maintain, week after week, maximum uninterrupted production at the Sunday Times. There are some nasty people in its bowels who may try to prevent this happening, and if the Sunday does not produce cash in quantities the whole operation will come unstuck. Aggro in the Sunday Times machine-room will quickly spread to the rest of the building— and to the Sun and the News of the World too — and Murdoch's magic reputation for getting on with the print unions, one of his biggest assets, could disappear with disconcerting speed. In dealing with disruption, however, he has one big advantage over Thomson: comparative poverty. He said last week that if there is any nonsense in Grays Inn Road 'I will close the place down', and he probabiY means it at this stage. A closure as a result of a strike erases his legal responsibility to fork out redundancy payments and would allow him to flog the assets at a handsome profit. But this is to ignore the mesmerism which owning The Times exerts even on cut-throat capitalists, and it may be that, after a few. months, Murdoch will go soft, like the Thomsons before him, and start to ramble about his responsibilities to history, etc. What should help to keep Murdoch on the straight and narrow path of healthy avarice is the coming outburst of competifion in Fleet Street. In Campaign, the adman's weekly, Professor Tunstall, The Great Academic Expert, has been summoning up cataracts and hurricanoes, and predicting the demise of three dailies by 1984. Well: we heard all this from Cecil King back in the Sixties and nothing came of it. But we are certainly going to get some excitement in the Sunday field. There, the qualities have been gaining ground, thanks to their colour mags. In the last decade, The Times, Telegraph and Observer increased their joint circulation from 3,025,000 to 3,446,000, a rise of 13 per cent. Over the same period, the News of the World, People and Mirror dropped from 16,210,000 to 12,013,000, a loss of 26 per cent. Another big loser was the Swag Express, which dropped from 4,263,000 in 1970 to 3,045,000, a loss of 29 per cent, and is now just below the 3 million mark. It has a highly successful editorial formula, virtuallY unchanged for a generation, and intense reader loyalty; but 21 per cent of its readers are over 65 and older readers have a distressing habit of dying. From 12 April the Express is hoping t° solve the death problem by taking the plunge into the colour supplement field' The competition for colour ads is alreaclY fierce because it includes the two broad. casting pachyderms, Radio Times (circhia' tion 3,373,030) and TV Times (3,113,60. Advertising in the Express magazine will he, expensive: £13,500 per colour page, secono only to the Radio Times (£15,900). More: over, the mag still has unsolved editorial problems, only weeks before D-day and /Iasi not yet (as I write) done a handling clea` with the newsagents. But it reports llea:17, bookings, and if it gets off the ground at ,..`e the Sunday Mirror and the News of M, World will really have no alternative b,,31 go ahead with their own supplements. Th3, should make for a very crowded tank piranha, and Murdoch will be in his el; ment. Think of 'Page Three' girls in colour supplements!
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