BRITAIN: The latest phase in London's never ending newspaper war opens this morning with a tabloid edition of the Times. Lynne O'Donnel reports
The Times, one of the oldest newspapers in the English-speaking world, will be available in tabloid format from today as its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, attempts to arrest flagging circulation by appealing to commuters with a more user-friendly shape.
The decision to publish a tabloid Times alongside the broadsheet edition comes at a tumultuous time in the British newspaper industry and could signal a period of innovation and change as established titles vie to hold onto their fickle market share.
News International, which owns the Times as well as its racier stable mate the Sun, will initially print 70,000 copies of its new tabloid and distribute it inside the M25, the ring road circling London's greater metropolitan area.
The publisher hopes to attract readers within this commuter belt who find the larger broadsheet format unwieldy while wedged into London's cramped trains and buses, and women, who have long shunned the Times in favour of other titles.
At least one large café chain has agreed to give away the smaller Times with takeaway coffees during the morning rush hour.
The plan appears to be to first test the market in the London feeder suburbs in the hope that sales success will justify taking the tabloid national in the near future.
While the editor of the Times, Mr Robert Thompson, is claiming to be "making history" with the smaller format, it is the Independent, owned by Independent News and Media, owners of the Irish Independent, that has forced what looks like becoming the most dramatic transformation of the British news media landscape in recent history.
Sir Anthony O'Reilly's London Independent began printing a tabloid edition on September 30th. The paper is identical in every facet but size to its broadsheet sister and claims to have pushed up sales by 30 per cent with the smaller paper outselling the broadsheet in many places where the two are side-by-side.
The distribution area has been expanded and the paper said last month that tabloid sales were above 30,000 per day - still a minnow in the huge British market but, once again, a trailblazer for its heftier rivals.
The success of the mini-Independent has been a surprise for many media analysts in Britain, few having believed that it would lead to as great a leap in circulation in such a short time. But as newspaper price wars have shown, readers are fickle and will often change a long-term allegiance for the sake of a few pence.
When it comes to broadsheet versus tabloid, it seems, size really does matter.
The Independent appears to have arrested a decline in sales which had threatened its long-term viability. The irony could be that its courage in being the first British quality paper to try the smaller format will backfire, and its sales gains will be transferred to the better-selling Times.
Rupert Murdoch has made no secret of his long-held desire to overtake the Daily Telegraph as market leader. The Telegraph's daily sales hover above 900,000 while the Times is below 600,000 after a drop of more than seven per cent in October.
Not since the Daily Mail was downsized to a tabloid in 1971 has the British newspaper market, one of the most dynamic and competitive in the world, faced such a significant shake-up. It is well known that other major broadsheets, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph, have been toying with the notion of publishing a parallel downsized version since the Independent's move, though they are remaining watchful for now.
Guardian editor Mr Alan Rusbridger was quoted in his own newspaper this week saying: "We're keeping our options open and watching developments with interest."
The Daily Telegraph is facing its own problems as proprietor Lord Black of Crossharbour, the Canadian-born press baron, is being investigated amid allegations that he was granted unauthorised payments in a complicated business transaction.
The possibility that he will dispose of his prized asset makes any radical initiative by the Telegraph unlikely in the immediate term.
"It's no secret that we've prepared a beautiful tabloid dummy," the editorial director of the Telegraph, Mr Kim Fletcher, told the Guardian this week. "If or when we're going to publish it alongside our best-selling broadsheet is something we don't want to discuss at present."