MEDIA STUDIES
You may think me biased, but I'd just like to say
what the Times didn't say about its circulation
STEPHEN GLOVER
Sounds good? Whenever newspapers sing their own praises they tend to leave out some information and not to provide a critical glossary. No reason was given for the extraordinarily rapid increase in sales, nor for the choice of August 1993 as a starting point. The explanation is that at the beginning of September 1993 the Times cut its cover price from 45 to 30 pence. The following June the paper further reduced its price to 20 pence when the Daily Tele- graph joined the price war. The effect of both reductions was to give an enormous boost to the circulation of the Times. In August 1993 it sold a daily average of 354,280 copies. Over the last six months it has averaged 669,028 — almost double.
Why did the Times not mention the price cut m its triumphalist puff? Price-cutting was a brilliant idea. Since acquiring the paper in 1981 Rupert Murdoch had been through three editors (one of whom admit- tedly died in harness) and by August 1993 he was on his fourth — Peter Stothard. His strategy, which had been to 'get the Tele- graph', had failed. Yanking the Times downmarket had still not attracted enough readers to satisfy Mr Murdoch when Mr Stothard was appointed in 1992. Whether Mr Murdoch or Mr Stothard can take more credit for dreaming up the price war has not yet been determined by history, but that it was a stroke of genius is not in ques- tion. Most people, myself included, thought that price did not matter so very much in the quality market, but in the case of the Times we were wrong. The paper has at last become a formidable competitor of the Telegraph, whose sales stand at just over 1 million copies a day. This has led to an expectation in certain quarters that it is only a matter of time before the Times overtakes the Telegraph. If it can almost double its circulation in three years, why can it not repeat the perfor- mance over the next three years? Such was the achievement of the Daily Telegraph dur- ing the 1930s when, selling at a discount to its main competitors, it multiplied sales sev- enfold. Some people look enviously at the Times with its peculiar mix of upmarket and downmarket journalism supposedly so attractive to younger readers whom adver- tisers covet. They wonder whether the Tele- graph should not go more wholeheartedly down the same path.
But it is too early to depict the Times as all-conquering. It still sells at ten pence less than the Telegraph —30 versus 40 pence — which is a significant price advantage. This may help us to understand why the paper did not mention the price war in its page two propaganda. The two titles are not competing on even terms. Yet the Times has extracted all the available benefits from the price war. Its sales have not risen over the past six months: in fact, they have dipped very slightly as the paper has increased its cover price in two five-pence increments from 20 pence. So as to make the paper profitable, Mr Murdoch would like to increase the cover price further if he could be sure of hanging on to his new readers. The trouble is that he can't be. Sales might fall if he raised the price to 40 pence.
Hidden in the triumphalism last Saturday was a rather worrying figure. The paper's sales may have nearly doubled since August 1993, but its readership has gone up by only 34 per cent. (Actually I make it 29.7 per cent, but no matter.) How can this be? Cir- culation equals numbers of copies sold or given away. Readership equals the number of people who have read or looked at a copy of the paper for more than two min- utes in the last 24 hours. There are estimat- ed to be between two and three readers for every copy of most broadsheet titles. The distinction between readers and buyers may seem tiresome but it is important for adver- tisers to know how many — and what sort of — people are reading a newspaper or magazine. It is readership more than circu- lation which determines how much adver- tisers will pay to advertise.
As circulation goes up, you would expect readership to rise, if not at the same rate at least not so very far behind. The Times's readership has lagged alarmingly. (Inciden- tally, though the paper rightly says that it has more readers between the ages of 25 and 44 than any other quality title, it does not mention that the majority of its new readers are over 45.) It appears that some people may be buying the paper because it is comparatively inexpensive but not read- ing it. And — equally likely — those who might previously have read someone else's copy of the paper (in the library, office or home) are now buying their own copy because it is relative,ly cheap. The question is how many of these people will go on buy- ing the Times when the cover price rises again, as it eventually must. My guess is some of these new buyers will drop out, though perhaps not in very large numbers.
As I write a column for the Daily Tele- graph, readers might be wise to take any- thing I say about that paper with a pinch of salt. (The Spectator is a sister publication of the Telegraph). I certainly do not want to belittle the achievements of the Times — even if it has helped almost to kill off the Independent. In some respects it is my favourite newspaper. I may complain about the bimbos whom Mr Stothard puts on the front, and the cheap little news stories, but he has recruited columnists such as William Rees-Mogg and Simon Jenkins, hired Anthony Howard to resuscitate the obitu- aries, improved the books pages and fos- tered Matthew Parris and Anatole Kalet- sky. But there is a danger in attributing almost occult powers to the paper. In a number of areas — sports, business, home news — it remains inferior to the Telegraph. No doubt it will continue to improve but, given that the benefits of the price war are exhausted, any further circulation growth will be slow and hard-fought.
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