Quality Sundays
While overall national Sunday newspaper sales continue to fall, the so-called quality sector outperforms the market. The February circulation figures show the big three – the News of the World, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Mirror – all down year on year and Trinity Mirror’s other title, the People, more than 9% adrift.
| National Sunday newspaper circulation - February 2006 | ||||
| Newspaper | Feb 2006 | Feb 2005 | % Change | Feb 2006 (inc bulks) |
| Sunday Times | 1,357,485 | 1,387,032 | -2.13 | 1,371,545 |
| Sunday Telegraph | 647,798 | 645,251 | 0.39 | 683,741 |
| Observer | 456,533 | 414,898 | 10.03 | 484,357 |
| IoS | 211,293 | 174,268 | 21.25 | 244,287 |
| Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations (figures exclude bulks unless stated) | ||||
Of the quality titles examined here, only the Sunday Telegraph shows a reverse, with the Sunday Times almost standing still – quite a feat in a shrinking market with sales of 1.35 million. British quality Sunday papers are a cultural phenomenon. More words than a short novel, enough sections to fill a self-respecting magazine rack, and all the views needed to sound up to speed for the rest of the week. Interestingly, all the titles do little to promote the wealth of material inside from their front pages. There’s an assumption that the reader is going to find it – not always a safe presumption in this search-engine driven world.
Independent on Sunday
Price: £1.60 (compact size)
Sections: Main section of news, comment and sport (92 pages), The Compact Traveller (20 pages), Business, with Money and Property (28 pages), Overseas Property (quaintly, viii pages), ABC: arts, books, culture – geddit? (48 pages), Sunday Review (56 pages).
Puffery: Learn German in Just Six Weeks, with a ‘free’ book to go with the ‘free’ CD in the previous day’s Indy.
Come-ons: Janet Street-Pawtah, picture x-refs to sport and review.
Positioning: Filling the quirky middle ground that the Observer seems to have deserted. Front of the book stories on toilets in the House of Lords and Rupert Murdoch’s unexpectedly smutty website are complemented by politics and proper news (bird flu yawn).
Best section: Sunday Review, with its adventurous take on weekend staples like food and gardening, is a refreshing addition to the scene, but there’s no getting away from the meaty main section, with pithy comment sandwiched between tons of news and 30 pages of sport. And, where is the rule that says sport must have its own section? Most Brits are still comfortable with sport at the back of the book.
Inside word: It’s hard not to like the Indy, with its solid take-it-or-leave-it single issue covers. Of all the titles, this is the one closest to its brother daily, and it seems happy in those everyday clothes. Healthy increase in sale should continue.
Sunday Times
Price: £1.80 (broadsheet)
Sections: Main section of news and comment (28 pages), Sport (28 pages), Business (16 pages), News Review (14 pages), Money (10 pages), Appointments (14 pages). Compact sections: Travel (40 pages), Driving (28 pages), Home (64 pages). Magazines: The Sunday Times magazine (64 pages), Style (68 pages), Culture (80 pages).
Puffery: New York for £198 (doesn’t sound that cheap), their own beauty awards.
Come-ons: Miserably small index strip along the foot of the page.
Positioning: For so long the Sunday newspaper and still the one to beat, if only on sheer size. Eleven sections position this title at just about everyone who can understand words of more than three syllables.
Best section: The main news section, once the pride and joy of the ST, feels a bit thin, both in size and substance nowadays, so this sectional award goes to Home, which proves yet again that advertising is an integral part of any successful publication. Classy editorial, but even classier (and pricier) ads.
Inside word: Still sells more than the other three titles combined, and has the all-important advertising to underpin the journalism. It has the confidence and resources to continue to pummel the others into submission.
Sunday Telegraph
Price: £1.60 (broadsheet)
Sections: Main section and News and Comment (32 pages), Business (10 pages), Sport (16 pages), Money & Jobs (20 pages), New York Times selection box (8 pages), Travel (16 pages), Home & Living (8 pages). Magazines: Seven (96 pages), Stella (76 pages).
Puffery: Eurostar for £50 (collecting pesky passwords) and picture x-ref to Seven.
Come-ons: Three talking heads, including a scrubbed up Gary Lineker.
Positioning: Had its travails of late, losing editors as well as readers. Younger and trendier than the Daily Telegraph, not that it’s difficult to perform that particular conjuring trick.
Best section: It’s difficult not to have a soft spot for the much maligned Stella, a sassy women’s mag launched by now ex-editor Sarah Sands, but the vote goes to the other mag, Seven, which combined arts and ents with TV in a powerful package.
Inside word: Readership is on the slide, and a change of editor from the more populist Sarah Sands to the more businesslike Patience Wheatcroft may not be the answer. The paper, like its readers, needs cheering up.
Observer
Price: £1.60 (Berliner)
Sections: Main section of News and Comment (46 pages), Business & Media (20 pages), Sport (24 pages), Review (34 pages), Escape (16 pages). Magazines: Television (28 pages), The Observer Magazine (72 pages), Observer Woman (68 pages).
Puffery: Free DVD inside, Don’t Look Now (that’s the film, not an instruction to readers). Win a digital camera.
Come-ons: Glossy new look for Woman magazine. Nothing to other sections.
Positioning: Suddenly become a bit too serious for its own good. Tons to read, but resolutely good and proper.
Best section: Definitely not Television, a scabby, stitched 28 pages of newsprint, so the vote goes to the monthly magazines (Sport, Food, Music and Woman), which need only extra pages to put them on a par with anything at the newsstand.
Inside word: Sales up after the Berliner blitz, but not looking as comfortable as the Guardian in its new clothes. Has a loyal constituency, but the Independent could catch even more floating voters looking for a lively outlook.
Changing Media Summit 2006
And, so to one of those navel-gazing conferences that is going to tell us all where the media is heading. Changing Media Summit 2006 - 'Changing technologies, changing behaviour and changing business models' – was a one-day forum organised by MediaGuardian in March. The delegates were from all sides of the media - newspapers, magazines, websites etc - plus lawyers, academics, advertising people and sundry hangers-on.
I signed up to understand the ‘commercial impact of blogging’ and learned all about ‘platform promiscuous consumers’. I found out how ‘mobile technologies are changing social relations’ and hoped to find ‘new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world.’
Okay, so it’s not difficult to poke fun at these media mumbojumbo sessions. But I did have something reinforced that I learned long ago.
Chris Dobson, general manager for sales and trade marketing at MSN International, told the throng that Microsoft has decided that ‘everyone is in the content business.’ Although he was quick to dismiss print as an industry in decline (well, he would, wouldn’t he) he acknowledged that the good news is that content is ‘very important.’
And, speaker after speaker, from all shades of media opinion came to the same conclusion: without quality content the platform or means of delivery is immaterial.
Tamar Kasriel, head of knowledge venturing for Henley Centre Headlight Vision, shone her futurologist’s torch into the uncertain future to examine the love-hate relationship between information and time. Again, we end up at quality content delivered when it’s wanted.
I’m from the last generation of journalists who worked in ‘hot metal’. I marveled at those clanking, smelly machines that turned my scribbles to fresh newsprint in a matter of minutes. But, as Tom, the caseroom overseer, never tired of telling me when the copy was late: ‘Hurry up, lad, there’s fish and chips in that tonight.’
Now I have a blog and an iPod, but I’ve never forgotten the lessons of timeliness and quality content. Without both I was sunk then and I’d be sunk now.
The Sportsman
The Sportsman launched in March, and is bullish about the prospects of pulling in enough ‘sports’ fans (aka gamblers, punters, betters, losers) to trouble the Racing Post and establish a foothold in the daily newspaper market.
Media pundits have given the Sportsman a generous sporting chance, but fail to identify where enough regular readers are going to come from. A closer examination of where the potential readers are does not make happy reading.
* At the track. Unless it’s Royal Ascot and Cheltenham, there just aren’t enough punters to go round. A wet Tuesday at Southwell (attendance approx 350) will not get the tills jingling. The racing insert also seems to place the horses as an afterthought rather than as an important betting medium.
* In the betting shop. Unless the ‘big four’ high street bookmakers start displaying the Sportsman on shop walls, it will never have a presence with walk-in punters. Also, given that it doesn’t carry information on the daytime greyhound meetings, where impatient gamblers can lose their money every 10 minutes, it looks unlikely.
* In the home. The serious punter, who makes a living via his internet connection and even better insider connections, will not learn anything that he shouldn’t already know. The lack of a proper website really hurts. That ‘revolution in website publishing’ they promise for early May can’t come quickly enough.
* In the City. The four-page business section is a brave and bold leap of faith. But it still doesn’t measure up to any of the dailies’ business sections or the Financial Times, surely the biggest gambling title in the world.
* On the newsstand. At one pound, it’s cheaper than so-called rival the Racing Post, but more expensive than the Daily Star, Daily Express and the Sun combined. Neither will casual buyers be lured by lead stories about boxing, a minor sport if ever there was one.
Trinity Mirror, who own the Racing Post, are not shy of taking on the upstarts, and have a series of in-paper and TV ads positioning themselves as ‘the horse’s mouth’, and the competition as the, er, other end of the horse.
Like many sports fans, I really hope this works, but it’s long odds there are enough people who want to know that Tony Blair is now only 6-1 to outlast Thatcher or that Spreadex is offering a June gold contract of $570.20 to make this last.
