THE EDDY AND TINY SHOW?
that Shah and Rowland will make uncomfortable bedfellows
IT IS surprising, when you come to think of it, that Sir James Goldsmith was not among the many familiar figures hastening to rescue Today, or smother it with affec- tion. It is true that Goldsmith publicly washed his hands of the British journalistic scene after his disagreeable experience with Now magazine. But he is immensely more rich than he was then, and a bil- lionaire is allowed to second-guess his earlier millionaire incarnation. Besides, Today was a breakaway from the Fleet Street world, which Goldsmith rightly des- pises. Not least, Today, a technological construct waiting for someone to give it mind, heart and soul, was precisely the kind of vacuum of opinion Goldsmith might have amply filled. But he did not enter the fray.
Everyone else did. Robert Maxwell, apart from his habit of bidding for anything that's on offer, wanted the Today set-up for two solid reasons: as a possible plant for his metropolitan evening project, the London Daily News, and as an alternative printing centre the next time he has a showdown with the London print unions. But he would have required absolute own- ership of the company, and it was hard to see any place for Today as a paper in his future schemes. So Maxwell was not a very attractive bidder. Nor was Lord Rother- mere and his Associated Newspapers. To- day, in so far as it had a prime market target, was aimed at the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. Rothermere could have put Eddy Shah's infrastructure to all kinds of uses and, having plenty of money, might have paid a handsome price for it. But an early closure or merger of the paper itself would have been logically inevitable.
Kerry Packer's company was in some ways a more attractive partner. Packer had a major holding in TV-am, now profitable and about to go public, but he has no newspaper base in Britain. He would therefore have been willing, indeed anx- ious, to keep Today going. On the other hand, he would have wanted complete control, or something close to it, and it is difficult to see how Eddy Shah himself could have remained the effective boss of the publishing operation. That left Tiny Rowland and Lonrho. I can quite see why Shah found Rowland the most attractive of his suitors. He has plenty of cash. On the face of it, he seems a very generous fellow. He takes only a 35 per cent shareholding, leaving Shah himself with a 51 per cent controlling share and his posts as chairman and chief executive. Besides this, Lonrho puts in about £13.5 million new working capital to tide the paper over its present financial difficulties and give it the time to develop a more marketable editorial char- acter. As Shah was negotiating from a weak position, this arrangement was a great deal more favourable than he had reason to expect, and I don't blame him for making it.
On the other hand, this minority- shareholding-plus-cash-injection package is very similar, in essentials, to the one which Lord Hartwell negotiated with Con- rad Black to save the Telegraph papers, and which led in due course to Black acquiring the business. I don't think we should kid ourselves about the relative power-positions of Shah and Rowland. I 'WHOSE witnesses?' suspect that Rowland will be able to take outright control at any moment he sees fit, and when (and if) that time comes Shah will not be in a position to seek a rescuer from any other quarter. Whatever the share register says, there cannot be an equal partnership when one fellow has the money and the other has the debts.
That being so, we shall have to watch for two things. First, will Rowland leave To- day's editorial alone or will his business affairs make their presence felt as they already do in the pages of his Observer? Will Today start publishing exclusive `re- velations' about the travels of Mark Thatcher or the doings of the Al Fayed brothers? I do not expect such develop- ments immediately. After all, it was some time before the Observer felt the full impress of the Rowland business personal- ity. But in the long run this will be the test of who controls Today. My advice to Shah (if he still has the power) is to appoint as quickly as possible a really tough editor who will stand no nonsense from Rowland or anyone else. That is what the paper needs anyway, to give it a reason for existing and to begin the long haul of winning enough readers to stand on its own financial feet.
The second aspect to watch is the union angle. Rowland now straddles two prop- erties which, from a print union viewpoint, are incompatible. Today was conceived, and still remains, outside the traditional union framework. The Observer (and Lon- rho's Scottish newspaper properties) is still embedded in old-style monopoly union- ism. Rowland has shown no desire to fight the unions. He conspicuously failed to give the Observer editor any support when he was recently humiliated by the print unions and forced to suppress Bernard Levin's article. In short, Shah's and Rowland's attitudes to the unions appear to be irre- concilable. Is Rowland going to let the union monopolies into the Today plant? If so, the whole experiment will fail. But if he doesn't, will the unions at the Observer let him get away with it? Mixing Today and the Observer is mixing oil and water. I do not think it will be possible to keep them in separate compartments.
Meanwhile, another and much more significant newspaper property, the Finan- cial Times, will become available if the great Pearson conglomerate (which also controls Penguin) is taken over and broken up. This gentlemanly concern, thought to be much undervalued, was controlled in an appropriate manner by the Cowdray fami- ly. But as it expanded, the Cowdray percentage of the equity shrank, so it now musters only 20 per cent, split up among many individuals. Hence the takeover pos- sibility. In my view the FT needs stronger leadership, both on the editorial and the union front, so I would welcome the right kind of change. But at present all is speculation and mystery. Sir James Gold- smith at work, perhaps?
Previous page
