The Press

Lost Weekends

By RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL

rT9 HE Weekend Telegraph is not alone in facing serious distribution problems. Foreign sub- scribers to the Observer (who I believe are relatively numerous) seem to be distressed at the failure of the much publicised colour supple- ment in reaching them. An American Executive Vice-President from Chicago for instance, writes to me : As an American subscriber to the Observer I followed their propaganda campaign anxiously, and last week waited for the postman so that I could open my paper and find the great, wonder- ful, thrilling, exciting colour section. Alas, as a foreign subscriber, I am a second-class citizen, and they did not send it to me. I wrote the editors of the Observer a note telling them that since I pay six pounds a year for the airmail edition of their paper, I want all of it, and not just part of it.

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A free-lance journalist in Amsterdam wrote to me two days earlier enclosing a copy of a letter she had sent to the circulation manager of the Observer:

After all the hullabaloo and advertising about your colour• supplement, as one of your faithful foreign readers, I was, naturally, looking for- ward to seeing this journalistic marvel, wonder- ing how it would compare with the Sunday Times supplement, and whether it would be worth the extra cost. How much???

Last Sunday, not a single newsagent in Am- sterdam selling all foreign papers, had your colour supplement. Assistants in the two largest ones (Van Gelderen and ILA) told me, not merely on Sunday but also Monday, Tuesday, etc., that you had postponed publication—apparently- since not a single copy had been received.

Today, not a single copy of your colour supplement in the shops, but at least, and at last, I was told that colour supplements only go to subscribers! That means: only to hotels, to whom large quantities of papers are delivered on Sunday by the agents. There is no sense in being a subscriber as a private person since this would mean never receiving the paper until the follow- ing Tuesday.

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I am told that a little while ago Mr. Mark Boxer, editor of the Sunday Times colour supple- ment, met Mr. Paul Mandel of the Observer colour supplement at a cocktail party. Boxer said to Mandel: 'How much money are you losing?' Mandel replied : 'I have no idea: David never talks to us about money.' Boxer said : 'We have just been costing your second colour supplement; would you like me to send you a copy?' Mandel did not seem to be interested and wisely, too, perhaps, for the figure of loss for the second issue was put at £24,000.

This comes out at about £1,200,000 per annum. And the Observer advertising seems to have slumped with every issue. It has fallen 13} pages in colour advertising and 6 1/5 pages in black and • white since the first issue. I am told that Mr. David Astor has put a lot of his own money into this new venture. Some say a quarter of a million; some say half a miillion. If the latter figure is cor- rect it ought to keep the supplement going for a good six months. Meanwhile advertising revenue in the Sunday Times is extremely steady.

On the other hand the Observer has put on a lot of sale as a result of the supplement in all parts of the country. I hear that they are cur- rently selling about 900,000 copies per week. This puts them more than 200,000 ahead of the Sun- day Telegraph, though still a long way behind the redoubtable Sunday Times.

I must give a civil answer to two correspon- dents whose letters were published in last week's Spectator. Mr. T. A. Brocklebank (my son's former housemaster at Eton) thinks I used 'woolly phrases, devoid of clear meaning' when I wrote two weeks ago comparing the amount of coloured editorial with the black and white editorial in the Sunday Times and the Observer. He goes on to ask : 'Would he apply his judgment to telling us just how little space these newspapers devote to news?'

Mr. Brocklebank is under a misapprehension. I was dealing with the coloured magazines not with the news sections of these two Sunday news- papers. Both of them print a lot of news and a lot of admirable features in their first two sec- tions. Mr. Brocklebank might care to measure them up. Neither paper attempts to have news in their coloured supplements. They strive to be as topical as possible but in the nature of things it is impossible for them to have news since they have to go to press five or six weeks ahead of time.

Some people are shy of their Christian names. Mr. J. Donovan of 8 St. James's Place, London, SWI (quite a good address) complains that I could have been a little fairer in last week's article on the Sun's advent. He adds : 'Most com- ments were favourable on the publication, and this places Mr. Churchill's article in a rather chary and depressing light. Surely the future suc- cess of the Sun has something to do with the suc- cess of all papers, including the Spectator.'

I don't think that Mr. Donovan reads many newspapers. It is true that on the opening day a number of commentators headed by Sir Linton Andrews of Leeds (whom God preserve) issued some splendidly uncritical encomia. But today there is hardly anyone in Fleet Street or as far as I know elsewhere who has a good word to saY for the Sun, which is merely a brash resuscitation of the Daily Herald which was assassinated by Messrs. King and Cudlipp.

My fault—mea culpa, men maxima culpa— was that I was 'first with the news.' Though I do not always succeed, this is my guiding light. I don l like to fall in at the end of the queue. Moreover, I don't see how the future of the Sun is connected with that of the Spectator. Thank God they toll in different vineyards.