The press
Surviving
Paul Johnson
Anyone inspecting the health of the British national press at the end of 1981 can produce two completely differeat sets of arguments. The first is that Fleet Street is in serious trouble. The nationals have been unable to keep their production costs down either by installing new technology or by reducing overmanning on conventional plant. So their cover prices have risen faster than the retail price index and this is now being reflected in falling sales, at both ends of the market.
At the 'quality' end, the April-September 1981 figures show that, compared with last year, the Sunday Times, Observer and Sunday Telegraph combined sales declined from 3,444,455 to 3,157,550 a total drop of 287,105 or 2.14, 7.34 and 9.10 per cent respectively. The Daily Telegraph fell from 1,451,160 to 1,379,166. The Times, Guardian and Financial Times remained steady or made modest gains. But the first two lost a great deal of money and even the FT has been in the red recently.
The four popular Sundays lost a total of 670,213 copies on the year, nearly half (329,214) from the News of the World. There have also been losses among the Popular dailies, the only exception being the Daily Star. But there lies an important ,rub. The Star put on nearly half a million copies during the year, rising from the million mark, which it passed in 1980, to a peak of 1,587,790 in June. According to a financial report on newspapers by stockbrokers Grieveson Grant, the Star since its launch has actually succeeded in expanding the total popular daily market by 4.7 per cent. But its chief sales pitch has been free bingo. This year Rupert Murdoch, noting the star's success and alarmed by the losses sustained by the News of the World and the Sun, decided to plunge into bingo on a large scale. But whereas the Star could get bingo readers from nowhere, News International's bingo-drive put intense pressure on the other populars. Reluctantly the Mirror followed suit and plunged into bingo. Then the Express caved in. Now even the Mail is joining the gamble for readers, with its own suburban version called Casino.
There is no doubt that bingo puts on readers. But the latest set of figures is difficult to interpret because some populars have been boosted by bingo longer than others. But the Sun seems to have gained half a million readers, pushing itself over the 4 million mark for the first time since 1978, with a sale averaging 4,170,300 in September. The News of the World also made a dramatic recovery, averaging 4,449,530 in September, half a million up on its April-September average. Bingo is now helping the others, to judge by the enthusiasm with which they are sinking money into the gimmick. In January the Express group is launching a quarterly called Bingo Booklet, entirely filled with bingo cards relating to games played in its newspapers over a 12-week period. It is printing 30 million copies of the first issue, and the idea is to change its name to Express Shopper once it is established. The prizes each quarter will top £1 million and advertisers can buy space at £150,000 a page and even sponsor specific games. I have an awful feeling that the bingo circus is only just beginning.
But bingo is enormously expensive. One estimate is that Fleet Street may spend as much as £20 million in the present phase. That is only 1 per cent of the total revenue generated by the newspaper industry in 1980. Still it is a great deal of money to spend on an activity which has nothing to do with the provision of news. Even at the jug-and-bottle end of Fleet Street I detect a slight feeling of shame at what is being done. Other disadvantages include looming arguments with the Treasury (over betting tax) and Customs and Excise (over VAT charges).
So much for the bad news. But there is good news too. The new ownership at Times Newspapers is a clear improvement on its predecessor. It has already saved the Supplements and even launched a new one. It has created a structure in which the workforce now has more to lose than the company if the enterprise fails, and that is a change for the better. The Times still has many faults, including new ones, but there is no doubt at all that Harry Evans has made it more interesting to read. The change at the Observer is also a gain, if only because a money-grabbing British company like Lonrho has a stronger incentive to make the paper secure than an American oil company running it as a hobby.
What should really cheer us up is that, even at the depth of the longest and deepest recession in half a century, new titles are still being launched. This year two more Sunday colour supplements have appeared; a third and perhaps fourth will emerge in the spring. For the first time since the launch of the Sunday Telegraph more than two decades ago, Britain will have a new Sunday paper next May, when the Mail on Sunday is published by Lord Rothermere's Associated Newspaper group. The title is awkward (the Sunday Mail is already the property of the Mirror Group) but the objective, to occupy the centre position on Sunday which the Mail, since it went tabloid, has so successfully created on weekdays, is realistic. Part of the target is the vulnerable readership of the Sunday Express, but millions of younger readers form a potential market which is not, at present, catered for on Sundays. My hunch is that the new paper will not destroy the Sunday Express or fail in the attempt, but will force the Express into a long-overdue rejuvenation, and that both .papers will prosper in consequence. The Mail on Sunday will be the first British national to be set, from the start, entirely by photocomposition (now a commonplace in the provinces), which is progress of a sort. Its launch will cost Rothermere £12 million, which is expected to kill the rumours of an Express-Mail merger, at any rate until we see how the new paper goes.
It takes courage to risk a lot of money on a new national, if for no other reason than that, with TV covering the whole gamut, people look to the printed word to cater for special, rather than general, interests. The principle applies equally to newspapers (hence the success of the locals) and magazines (hence the failure of general papers like Now!). Which magazine has the highest profit margin in Britain? It is called Glass's Guide, deals in secondhand car prices, and (according to an ICC Business Relations report) averaged £2 million profits over the last three years. The survey shows that all ten of the most profitable publications are smallto medium-sized specialist magazines.
In these circumstances, it seems to me that the British are fortunate still to have the choice between ten morning and seven Sunday national newspapers, which are highly competitive in their news coverage and provide an enormous span of opinion. The finances of Fleet Street are Byzantine — in fact Byzantium's were superior up to the Fourth Crusade — and the standard of management is mediocre, if only because it is hard to attract clever, creative people to jobs where most of their time is spent arguing with union leaders who could not care less about the quality, success or future of the product. Yet the show stays on the road. Newspaper industry sales rose to £676 million last year, 18 per cent up on 1979. Advertising revenue at £936 million was 12 per cent up, and display advertising 20 per cent up. Not many British industries can produce such cheerful recession figures.
My main worry for the future lies in the political rather than the economic field. There is a myth on the left that Fleet Street is overwhelmingly right-wing and that something must be done about it. In fact most nationals are continually sliding into the soggy centre. They are also far less homogeneous than they were, editors much more broad-minded and proprietors (or boards) disinclined or unable to interfere. Good journalists can get their views printed anywhere these days. The papers reflect rather than shape their readers' politics. If there were a need for a new left-wing daily, why is it that the TUC, despite a lot of effort, has failed to raise even half of the £40,000 needed to make a mere 'feasibility study' for a new Daily Herald? Evidently trade unionists don't want it, and wouldn't buy or read it if it existed.
That of course will not silence those people on the left who want to lock Fleet Street into some kind of compulsory system. The so-called Campaign for Press Freedom is making steady progress within the union power structure and the Labour Party elites. It is significant that its viewpoint recently made its appearance on an official Labour Party political broadcast. We must now assume that a future Labour government would introduce legislation designed to restrict the right of newspapers to control their editorial content. That is one reason why I hope the SDP ousts Labour as the main opposition party. Fleet Street is a restless, imperfect, extravagant, foolish, unrighteous and endlessly fascinating creature. We must protect it from the political Savonarolas who want to sentence it to Death by Utopia.
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