Broadsheet or tabloid?

Compact questions
The Guardian | Media
Monday June 14 2004

Revolutions are never smooth transitions. After an initial burst of fervour there are usually periods of relative calm during which everyone – the leaders and the led – are able to assess whether tearing up the old world was a good idea after all.

It is a worrying time for the leaders because they can't go back. But how do they maintain the momentum? Why, they ask themselves, has the initial euphoria vanished?

That's the quandary facing both the Independent and the Times just now in the great compact revolution. As the latest official circulation figures reveal, the sales rises prompted by the move away from the broadsheet format have slowed dramatically in the past couple of months.

The Independent's astonishing year-on-year rise, up 22.86% on last May, is a tribute to its strategy of changing its shape. But the rate of increase has slowed considerably in the last two months.

It has built a platform and now comes the hard grind: without the aid of the publicity and marketing which previously gave it a sales boost it must convince more people to switch from their current choice of title.

The picture is somewhat distorted by the fact that the Indy did not go completely tabloid until May 17, so we must wait for the next set of figures to provide greater clarity.

Similarly, the Times's performance is difficult to analyse because it does not publish a compact on a Saturday, an issue which has performed badly in recent months after a lacklustre revamp.

What the figures do show is that the Monday-to-Friday compact Times was selling 301,000 copies last month, which means that half the readers are still not getting it. The tabloid figures will improve because the paper has now dropped its broadsheet in various regions. But will that mean the broadsheet loyalists begin to desert it?

The consistent problem for the Times is that its compact appears so much less authoritative than its broadsheet. The writers are there, the stories are there and most – but by no means all – the words are there. Yet the perception of the smaller version is that it lacks the gravitas expected of a paper of record.

Unlike the Independent, which has made the switch rather easily – due, in part, to its fewer pages and to its more committed journalistic agenda, which is more adaptable to the tabloid format – the Times's effort has been clumsy.

If upset Times broadsheet readers do seek out an alternative, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian would be delighted, because both are suf­ fering: the Telegraph is heading down towards 800,000 while the Guardian is struggling to keep its head above 350,000. Both titles need to take advantage of the becalmed compact revolution.

One title which desperately needs more buyers is the Financial Times, which is in something of a crisis. Its "headline" British sale in May was just 131,454, but 23,815 of these were bulk sales and a further 5,404 were sold at a discount. So the FT's full-rate sale in its home country last month totalled just 102,235.

To put that in perspective, in May 1999 the FT was selling 155,000 at its full cover price in Britain. So, in five years, it has lost 34% of its home circulation, a dramatic fall by any standard.

It's no wonder that the Business, the Sunday title on which the Barclay brothers have lavished millions, has found it impossible to attract a paying audience and depends for its sustenance on being given away free inside other publications.

The only conclusion is that the business niche, once one of the most healthy reading markets, now appears unable to support a viable newspaper.

The daily red-tops have nothing to crow about either, but the most eye-catching figure is surely the Daily Mirror's decline. It has been steadily losing sales over the months but the latest drop must be linked to the publicity surrounding the episode of the faked army torture pictures and the subsequent departure of its editor, Piers Morgan.

What would be fascinating to know is whether readers departed because they were upset by the use of hoax pictures or because they were disappointed at Morgan's sacking. This picture of David Beckham making an adjustment to a heart monitor did not rile the England captain or the Football Association. But a sneak shot of Beckham in his underpants, making a very different kind of adjustment, certainly upset the FA when it was published in the Sun and the Daily Star. The FA's lawyers warned editors that long-lens pictures were "an unjustifiable intrusion" into Beckham's private life. If the Press Complaints Commission is asked to inquire – and it hasn't yet received a letter – it will be an interesting case. The player was on a hotel balcony where he could argue that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Despite that, the best response by the PCC might be to do sweet FA.