Watching brief - Amanda Platell contemplates the end of broadsheets
Published 01 December 2003
A decade ago, focus group after focus group found that the broadsheet brand image was important to readers. Yet now we may be facing the end of the broadsheet as we know it
Rumours that Piers Morgan is secretly planning a broadsheet to take the Daily Mirror into what is fast becoming a quality vacuum are, I am told, greatly exaggerated. However, with the newspaper market in a state of change not seen since Eddie Shah launched Today in the mid-1980s, anything is possible.
When the inimitable Peter Preston argued in the Guardian that the rosy future for English rugby lay in the fact that "we have gone classless", he could have been stating the argument for the likely success of the broadsheets' adventure into tabloid land. Whether it be the Guardian or the Daily Telegraph, class and snobbery, inverted or otherwise, have been the reason these newspapers stayed big.
When I worked as managing director for the Independent titles, focus group after focus group proved that brand image, the broadsheet brand, was important to readers. Clearly, times have changed.
The Independent has proved with its tabloid, on sale alongside the broadsheet, that there is a genuine quality market out there, especially of younger readers, who are not put off by the traditionally middle-market format.
Tuesday 30 September 2003 could well be the day that marked the beginning of the end of the broadsheet, the day the gutsy little Independent, against all the odds and certainly most advice (including mine), produced a tabloid as an alternative to its broadsheet in London and Manchester. And it worked, increasing net sales by about a third.
Less than two months later, the Times has followed suit. The Telegraph, with its proprietor, Conrad Black, being forced to resign, is in no position to make big decisions. The Guardian, which already has G2, one of the best tabloid sections in the market, will no doubt wait and watch. All the broadsheets claim that they have prepared tabloid dummies, waiting for the right moment to strike.
With the Times entering the tabloid arena, it will be a gladiatorial battle between the two toughest fighters in the British market - Associated Newspapers, protecting the Daily Mail, and News International, fighting for the supremacy of the Times.
Rupert Murdoch has waited a long time for this chance - the opportunity to take his broadsheet into the middle market where the big bucks are. We can safely predict a period of big promotion and price cutting, neither of which the Telegraph, with its current crisis, nor the Independent, with its perennially poor resources, will be able to match.
It remains to be seen what kind of a fighter the Daily Express owner, Richard Desmond, turns out to be and whether he plunges his title downmarket like a submarine diving for safety or surfaces to meet the big boys.
The Mirror editor, Piers Morgan, is like English sport. Just when you think you can write him off, he knocks you sideways with a staggering victory. Hot on the heels of the Paul Burrell exclusive comes the fake footman and the expose of security, or lack of it, at both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Without adequate references - unless you call someone you drink with at the local pub a referee - the footman walked into the heart of the royal family and took pictures to reveal just about everything you ever wanted to know about life behind closed royal doors. Fascinating stuff, complete with Tupperware.
It resulted not in a thank you from the palace but a whopping injunction preventing the Mirror from printing further details of the royal family's private lives. If nothing else, it has to put the Mirror reporter Ryan Parry in the frame for Scoop of the Year.
If you want to discover what really makes the rugby hero Jonny Wilkinson tick, or kick, forget the endless eulogies and look no further than the Times article penned by the lad himself the day after the Rugby World Cup final.
It was beautifully written, powerful in its restraint and its honesty. Jonny explained why he had only two beers the night of the victory, why he sought peace and quiet and reflection instead of a skinful, and how his overriding emotion was the "feeling of winning and being a very proud member of a proud team".
In an era of attention-grabbing, narcissistic stars, it was refreshing to hear this young man say he was no hero. "I only get the points because I have team-mates who do the work and put me in the position to get them."
Commenting on the pictures of Prince Andrew's bedroom, taken inside Buckingham Palace by the fake footman, Anne Robinson writes in her Telegraph column that the "naffness is truly wonderful . . . [his] quarters look like a run-down two-star seaside hotel".
Which prompts one to ask: how would the multimillionaire Robinson know what a two-star hotel looked like, run-down or otherwise?
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